


Best Served Cold

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Blue Rose - Freeform, First Wives Club AU, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2344832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First Wives’ Club AU. Reunited by the suicide of one of their friends, divorcées Belle Chevalier (née French), Emma Jones (née Swan) and Mary Margaret Nolan (née Blanchard) decide that they are not going to take the  way life has treated them lying down, and set out to make their former husbands pay. After all, revenge is a dish best served cold, with a side of Granny’s coleslaw… Eventual Rumbelle, Gremma, and Snowing, and some rather unusual side pairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** As anyone who’s watched First Wives’ Club will know, there is a suicide within the first ten minutes. This fic is no different.

_“Belle, get in the picture!”_

_“Someone needs to hold the camera!”_

_“It’s on a delay, now get over here and get in the picture!”_

_“But!”_

_Emma rolled her eyes and pulled Belle into the middle of the circle of friends, smoothing down her graduation gown and adjusting her hair. “Belle, you are going to be in this picture whether you like it or not.”_

_“But…”_

_“Come on Belle, no buts. This is the most important day of our lives. Our careers start now! We are free, independent young women and we’re going to take the world by storm.” Mary Margaret looked around the room. “Where’s Marina got to?”_

_The four girls had met during their first week at university, and despite their vastly different personalities and interests, they had remained as thick as thieves right up until this, the moment of their graduation._

_“Yeah, Belle, it’s graduation, we might never see each other again,” Emma protested. “And where_ is _Marina? She can’t miss graduation.”_

_“Emma, don’t be pessimistic,” Mary Margaret scolded. “Of course we’re all going to see each other again.”_

_“Sorry I’m late, girls!” Marina burst into the room, still adjusting her graduation gown. “I had an audition and they kept me for so long afterwards that I thought I’d miss the ceremony altogether.”_

_“You had an audition?!” Mary Margaret exclaimed. “And you didn’t tell us?”_

_Of all of the girls, it was clear that Marina was the most likely to go far in her life, the most ambitious. She had the most amazing voice that any of the others had ever heard, and having majored in music, she was determined to be an opera singer. Mary Margaret was her polar opposite; with no great ambitions in life, she did however have a vocation. She was going to be a teacher. It was all she had ever wanted to do. Emma was clever, a loner sometimes, and fiercely independent, but once she had made a friend, she loved them deeply. And Belle… Belle had no idea what she wanted to do with her life once she left the security of university, but she had always enjoyed a good adventure, and she knew that she would find something. Marina had always joked how one so small could be so fearless, and it was Belle’s bravery rather than her stilettos that made her walk so tall in their eyes._

_“We need to make some sort of a pact,” Emma said. “So that we don’t just drift apart like everyone else does after we graduate and go our separate ways. We need to promise that we won’t lose touch with each other.”_

_“A toast,” Marina said, opening the carrier bag she was holding and taking out a bottle of champagne and paper cups. “To our friendship. May it never fade.”_

_Mary Margaret busied herself with dispensing champagne and Emma went over to set up the camera._

_“Is everyone ready?”_

_“No!” Belle yelled, but the others ignored her. It was hard enough to get Belle into a picture and now that they’d metaphorically tied her down, they weren’t going to let her wriggle away so easily. Mary Margaret passed round the cups and Emma dashed back to get into the picture._

_“To our sisterhood.”_

_The camera flashed._

Marina smiled fondly at the memory, touching her fingertips over the faces of her friends in the picture frame. University seemed so long ago now, and so much had happened since then. It was almost as if she were remembering a dream, something that never really happened. They had been so close back then, as close as sisters, but she had not spoken to any of her graduation friends for years now. Their pact to stay in touch hadn’t worked. Marina sighed. She’d known even back then that it wouldn’t. They were too different to stay friends really. When all their dreams and hopes had been in the future and their studies had been in the present, it had been easy to get along. But once the dreams started to become the present, then the cracks had begun to show. They were all so busy blazing their own trails, and their trails were so different that their paths were unlikely to cross by chance. Independent Emma, brave Belle, loving Mary Margaret. They’d gone on with their lives just as Marina had gone on with hers, rising and rising to new heights until she came crashing down with a bump. She should have been prepared for it really, and in a way she had been. Fame was a fickle mistress, especially in her business. The world of music was competitive and cut-throat, and the world of opera even more so since it was so select and exclusive. She had been riding high on her wave of success, but all it had taken was one missed season for her to be cast aside in favour of the next fresh talent on the up. Just one missed season, to rest her vocal folds after her operation.

She looked down at the newspaper beside her, a few weeks old now but she had clung onto it; rescuing it from the rubbish bin after Sebastian had thrown it out, claiming that it wasn’t healthy for her to keep looking at it.

_Nineteen-year-old soprano prodigy Vanessa Coast made a stunning debut in the Metropolitan’s latest production of Antonin Dvorak’s ‘Rusalka’ last night…_

It wasn’t just the fact that Eric had taken on a new starlet to replace her almost as soon as she announced her planned break from the stage. It wasn’t just that Eric had spent more and more time with his little virtuoso until they ended up in the same bed. It wasn’t just the fact that Marina had invested so much time, effort and money into helping Eric become one of the Met’s best artistic directors and he was repaying her by using her investments to help someone else up the career ladder instead of her. It was the fact that he’d put Vanessa in Rusalka for her debut, the same opera that Marina herself had debuted in all those years before. Rusalka was her part, her little mermaid tale, and to have Vanessa in that part felt like the ultimate slap in the face from Eric. _Look Marina! Look how much more superior my new bride is to you! She’s younger, and prettier, with a lovelier voice, and she sings your trademark part better than you do now!_

It made Marina sick to think of it.

_“The artisitic director of the Metropolitan Opera, Eric Prince, married his star soprano Vanessa Coast this morning…”_

“That’s enough of that.”

The television winked out in the middle of the bulletin and the lack of sound made Marina look up, peering over the back of the sofa to see Sebastian standing in the living room doorway with his arms folded, holding the remote and looking stern. His expression melted when he saw her and he came over to perch on the arm of the sofa.

“Marina, darling, please don’t do this to yourself.” He picked up the paper next to her and sighed. “I thought I’d got rid of this.”

Marina snatched it back out of his hand. “I want to keep it,” she snapped.

“Marina…” Sebastian crouched down beside her so that he could look her eye-to-eye. “Marina, this is not healthy, pet. Please. Stop doing this to yourself. You’ll never get over the bastard if you constantly have him around, will you? It’s not good to dwell on so many reminders. You’re only making yourself hurt even more.”

Marina didn’t reply. She knew that what he said was the truth. She just didn’t want to face up to it and let go. Yes, she hurt, and keeping such a close eye on Eric and Vanessa’s lives hurt even more, but as unbearable as it was, she needed the pain. Sebastian was a dear. He’d practically moved in the day that Eric had moved out, wanting to make sure that she wasn’t alone and she had someone to take care of her if she needed it. But even with Sebastian’s mothering presence, Marina had never felt more alone. Sebastian didn’t know what it was like. At least if she continued to keep tabs on Eric, she could feel less lonely, feel like she was still a part of his world.

She snorted. She wasn’t going to be a part of his world again really, was she? Not now that he had Vanessa, his new star, and Marina had been relegated like the rest of the cast-offs. Losing her voice, even if it had only been for one season, had lost her everything. What hope did she have now? She wouldn’t find any more work without a struggle, not now she wore the label of one of Eric Prince’s rejects. Marina looked over at the bottle of vodka on the end table next to her. It was empty again. She wasn’t quite sure how it always ended up like that. She was sure it had been full last night. The world was a quagmire and Marina was drowning in it, but it was all right. She had a plan. She hadn’t talked it through with Sebastian though, like she had always talked over all her plans with him ever since she’d started singing when she was sixteen. He’d try and talk her out of it. She needed to get him out of the way.

“Sebby,” she wheedled, and Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “Will you be a darling and run an errand for me?”

“You’ve had quite enough vodka, if you’re going to ask me to run to the off licence,” Sebastian replied. He sighed and stroked her hair when she pouted. “What can I do for you, pet?”

“Will you take these letters to the postbox please? They really need to go today and I don’t feel like going outside. Not with…”

She gestured towards the television and Sebastian nodded his understanding.

“Of course, pet.” He took the letters off her and made to leave the room. “Take care of yourself.”

“I will.” It was true. She would. Just perhaps not in the way he’d like her to. Marina felt a pang of guilt. Sebastian had been so good to her, and she felt awful to be repaying him like this, but she couldn’t see another way. She needed her pain, and she was tired of needing that pain.

She didn’t move until she heard the front door close, and even then, she moved slowly, languidly. She wasn’t afraid. She had all the time in the world to carry through.

Marina had told Sebastian time and time again that she needed the pain. It made her feel alive. It kept her going. But it was exhausting to hurt so much, sometimes, and she just wanted to get rid of it all. And if the pain was the only thing keeping her going, then to get rid of the pain, all she had to do was stop.

Just stop.

The swimming pool was warm. Marina had always loved having an indoor swimming pool. When she had been younger it had been the height of luxury for her; her ultimate aim in life was to have an indoor swimming pool. She’d always loved the water, and Eric had always used to joke that it was why she was so good in the role of a water sprite. The thought of Eric pained her again. She wondered if Vanessa liked swimming as much as she did. She wondered if Eric and Vanessa had ever made love in a pool.

Just stop.

That was what Sebastian kept pleading with her to do. Just stop, Marina. Stop mooning over Eric and let us help you move on, pick yourself up and heal, and it won’t hurt anymore. Just stop.

Marina reached the deep end of the pool, her clothes weighing her down, and she just stopped.


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is pre-rumbelle, Bae, and Mulan

“Drat drat drat.” Belle’s inner monologue was slightly more colourful as she raced around the flat, trying to gather together the contents of her handbag at the same time as putting on her mascara and nearly stubbing her toe on one of the many piles of books that crowded her bedroom. The advantages to having a husband who worked in publishing were numerous – namely new, unreleased books just begging to be read. The disadvantages were no less weighty – the main one being a lack of space in which to put said books. The other major drawback to owning so many books was a tendency on Belle’s part to get carried away with them late into the night and sleep through her alarm next morning.

She cast a melancholy glance in the direction of the stack of books by the bed that had held her attention the previous evening. _Making Marriage Work. Fixing Your Broken Relationship. How to Find your Man (and Keep Him)._  How ironic, Belle thought with a snort of humourless laughter, that the therapy books should make her late for her therapy session. It wasn’t that Belle didn’t want to mend her marriage, of course not. She and Gaston had been together for seven years, and having invested so much time and love into their relationship, she wanted to see it fixed again. They were just going through a rough patch, and when Gaston had suggested that they saw a therapist to help them identify their psychological relationship issues, of course Belle had agreed. But despite that, she couldn’t help but think that her sessions weren’t what one might call useful. Belle felt like she was the only one working towards resolution and reconnection. In six months, they hadn’t made any progress. She and Gaston were still separated, despite Belle trying everything that her therapist suggested. Her therapist… That was the other sticking point. Belle didn’t like her therapist. Dr Blue was disarmingly kind and mild-mannered, but Belle could hear constant disapproval in her voice, a constant shaming that made her feel guilty for no discernible reason, as if Blue was blaming Belle for the breakdown of the marriage and emotionally blackmailing her into doing all the work to fix it. She sighed; since she and Gaston did not often have joint sessions she couldn’t judge too harshly, but on the few occasions that the doctor had seen them both together, it had felt that Belle was always the one being urged to bend and compromise to her estranged spouse’s wishes.

Perhaps Belle would have got on better with Dr Blue’s partner, Dr Hopper. In the few moments that she had shared with him on her way into or out of Blue’s office, Belle had found an easy rapport with the young man, easier than her relationship with her own therapist. Dr Hopper was, for want of a better term, _normal_ ; down-to-earth, open and unassuming. Not like Blue’s air of cool superiority, a feeling that because she analysed and understood human emotions, they were somehow beneath her dignity. But Gaston had insisted that it would be more beneficial for them to see the same therapist, and he had preferred Dr Blue’s approach. Belle, in the spirit of conjugal co-operation, had gone along with his decision. She was trying very hard not to regret it.

The problem was that despite all the sessions, Belle still couldn’t really work out where her marriage had gone so wrong. If she was looking at her relationship through the eyes of a third party, she would say that it was because she and Gaston were completely incompatible, but if that was truly the case, then they would never have ended up together in the first place, would they? They had met when they had both started interning in the same publishing house. Belle loved books and had majored in English, and publishing had been a career that had appealed to her. She was, even if she said so herself, good at it, because she took the time to read all the materials that were presented to her. No matter the quantity or quality, that part of her job was never a chore. Gaston, on the other hand… She wasn’t sure that he had ever finished a book in his life. He was far more concerned in the business side of things, whilst Belle enjoyed the literary aspect. Together they worked well as a team, each bringing their own strengths to the table, and working in such close proximity to each other all the time, naturally there had been some flirting and attraction. One thing had led to another, and they were wed a year later.

But then Gaston had become ambitious, and started clawing his way up the hierarchy in the firm. Publishing was more about profits than about bringing pleasure to thousands of people through the medium of the written word, in his eyes, and Belle was no longer comfortable in the same firm as him. The job that she had always loved held no enjoyment for her now, and she had quit, taking up temporary posts as substitute school librarians or short-term contracts as booksellers. Blue said that she was hiding jealousy of Gaston’s success and internalising her anger with the glass ceiling that had prevented her from rising to the same level of prestige within the firm, but Belle wasn’t sure that she subscribed to that theory. It was more that she wanted a return to the old days, when they used to talk all the time, but looking back, she couldn’t remember what they talked about. They didn’t really discuss anything, if she recalled correctly. She mainly talked about the books they were publishing and he mainly talked about himself.

Having gathered all her things together, she shook herself out of her melancholy remembrances and finally made it out of the apartment, still jamming her shoes onto her feet. She was almost at the top of the stairs down to the front door of her building when a pointed cough made her turn on instinct.

“Ahem.”

Mulan was standing in her own front doorway, arms folded and one eyebrow raised in a classic pose that Belle associated with peeved parents confronting their drunken offspring when they came home at half-past four in the morning. Her father had worn it on more than one occasion during her youth, and Belle immediately felt like a guilty teenager, although quite what she was being accused of was yet to be disclosed.

“Good morning Mulan,” she said brightly, deciding to head her next-door neighbour off at the pass. “I really can’t stop to chat, I’m late for an appointment.”

“You’re going to see That Woman again, aren’t you?” Mulan said, and Belle could almost hear the capitalisation in her voice. She decided that feigning ignorance was the way to get out of this particular conundrum, even though she knew full well that it wouldn’t work.

“Which woman, Mulan?”

“The psychotic therapist to whom you pay a ludicrous amount of money every week only for her to make you feel like a pathetic specimen of human being. It’s not healthy, sweetie. Therapists are supposed to help people feel better, not make them feel worse.”

Belle sighed heavily. “Making me feel better isn’t exactly the point of the exercise, Mulan. The point is to try and fix my relationship with Gaston, and if this is the best way to go about it, then so be it.”

Mulan leaned in the doorframe. “I don’t think that eroding your self-esteem and making you think that you’re a horrible person is really the best way to go about doing anything, be it repairing your relationship or not. I’ve said it time and again, I think that the best thing you can do to repair your relationship with the man is to dump him and move on once and for all.”

“It’s not that simple, Mulan. I did marry him after all. There was a reason for that, even if I can’t always remember it. But that’s why I’m going to therapy. To rediscover these things so that we can make a better go of it on the second time round.”

Mulan nodded sadly. “I know you married him, and I still can’t for the life of me work out why. Or why you persist in giving him second chances.”

“It takes two to tango, Mulan.”

“But he makes you miserable, sweetie. This marriage makes you miserable. This therapy makes you miserable. I know it does.” She sighed. “I worry.”

Belle didn’t have a response for that, because it was true. Her sessions with Dr Blue never left her feeling that she had made any kind of positive achievement. They only emphasised how far she still had to go, the ever-uphill struggle that she was still facing.

Mulan came out of the doorway and wrapped her friend in a hug. “I miss you.”

“You see me practically every day. We live next door to each other.”

“I miss you at work, though. I don’t get any intelligent conversation since you and Rory left. Now it’s just me on my own in the office. The nearest I get to a discussion with anyone is Gaston yelling at me to get his coffee and me yelling back at him to damn well get his own. I can practically feel my brain cells dying off one by one.”

Mulan and Aurora had joined the company at the same time as Belle and Gaston had, and the three girls had become good friends. Although they did not have much contact with Aurora now since her move to Canada for her husband’s job, Mulan and Belle had remained close, especially after fate had made them neighbours as well as colleagues.

“I’m sure it can’t be that bad, Mulan.”

Her neighbour fixed her with what Belle had come to know as ‘The Look’. Mulan had patented that look.

“Belle, you are not happy, and trying to fix your marriage isn’t making you any happier.” She peered over the landing railing and down the stairs as the sound of two sets of footsteps – one light and pattering, the other heavy and with uneven gait – came up towards them.

“Mr Gold, tell Belle I’m right,” Mulan called down the stairs.

“Belle, Mulan is right.” Mr Gold, Belle’s other next-door neighbour, finally appeared at the top of the stairs, juggling cane in one hand, five-year-old tugging on the other, and morning paper tucked under one arm. He stopped when he saw the two women standing on the landing and gave them a quizzical look. “What are you right about, precisely?”

“That Gaston’s not good enough for her and she’d be a lot happier if she stopped trying to fix her marriage and actually believed us when we tell her she deserves better,” Mulan explained, before Belle could make any kind of protest.

“Right.” There was a pause. “In that case, Belle, Mulan is definitely right.”

“Daddy! We’re missing the dinosaurs! You promised we’d be back in time to watch the dinosaurs!”

Bae pulled on his father’s hand again and Mr Gold lost his precarious hold on the paper, which slithered down onto the floor. Belle bent to pick it up and tousled Bae’s hair on the way down.

“Good morning, Bae.”

“Morning Mrs Shev.. Shuv.. Shevva…” The boy’s tongue twisted around her surname.

“Chevalier,” his father murmured, but Bae had already given up.

“Good morning Mrs Belle,” he finished. Belle smiled. It was as good a moniker as any. She picked up the paper and was about to hand it back to its owner, who had now extricated his fingers from his son’s iron grip in order to find his keys, when something caught her eye and she had to double take. The headline that she had read half of now stood out in massive relief, bold black on white and undeniable.

_Opera star found dead in swimming pool, suicide suspected._

With it was a photograph of Marina, as clear as day. Belle felt her heart leap to her mouth, and she leant back heavily against the railings.

“Belle? Is everything ok?”

Mulan’s voice seemed very far away as Belle continued to read, transfixed in horror.

_Marina Tempest-Prince, former star soprano at the Metropolitan Opera and ex-wife of current artistic director Eric Prince, was discovered dead in the swimming pool of her Manhattan home on Tuesday evening… Police have ruled that her death was a suicide and are not looking for anyone else… Her friend Sebastian Hermit, who had been living with Ms Tempest and who found the body, stated that she had been suffering from depression for several months… Mr Prince, whose wedding to Miss Vanessa Coast took place earlier on Tuesday, was unavailable for comment…_

“Belle?”

She looked up at Mulan and Mr Gold’s worried faces and back down at the paper.

“I went to college with her.” Belle handed the paper back to Mr Gold, horribly aware of how badly her hands were shaking. “We never kept in touch.”


	3. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is Mary Margaret and Emma’s histories, Granny, and lightsabers.

It was just her luck, thought Emma. The one day she really, really needed to get to something was the one day that the babysitter got food poisoning and had to cancel. She’d never find anyone else last minute, so she was faced with a choice of taking Henry to Marina’s funeral or not going herself. Henry had already said that he would be perfectly happy to at stay home alone and play Space Paranoids all day, but Emma had quickly vetoed that idea. There was no point in asking Killian; he’d shirked off babysitting duties even when they’d still been together. “He’s your son,” Killian would point out. “He’s your responsibility.” And that would naturally lead to Emma _gently_ reminding Killian that he had accepted that responsibility when he had asked her to marry him and by proxy become Henry’s stepfather. And that would naturally lead to yet another argument.

Their romance had been a whirlwind one, and it was only after their honeymoon that it had really sunk into Killian’s brain that he was sharing Emma with a then eight-year-old. Marry in haste, repent at leisure, but Killian had been so different to Neal that Emma had been foolish enough to think that she couldn’t possibly get it so very wrong twice in a row. The main problem was that Killian didn’t like coming second to anyone or anything. As a successful entrepreneur in the shipping business and a former captain in the merchant navy, he was used to being important and being listened to. Emma’s firm assertion that no matter what, Henry would always come first to her, had knocked him for six slightly.

He loved Emma, or at least had loved her. Of that she had no doubt. But ultimately he had wanted just Emma, not any of the baggage that Emma came with – and Emma came with a lot of baggage. He’d been handsome and charming and charismatic, and he’d won her over with tales of the high seas and adventure. She’d helped him set up his new business, and in any other circumstances, Emma had no doubt that they could have been very happy together, jetting off all over the world searching out new business contacts and building up a miniature empire for themselves. But these were the circumstances, and Emma wouldn’t change them for the world, not when they had brought her Henry.

And then the mysterious Milah had come along. Brilliant, bright, adventurous Milah, willing to take off and go anywhere, uncaring of the consequences.

Henry would always come first, so when the marriage had started to come apart, it had taken Emma precisely no thought at all to choose Henry over everything else. When Emma had rung Killian’s Paris hotel room at midnight European time to have the phone answered by a distinctly female voice, it had taken no thought at all to dump all Killian’s possessions (including the dirty laundry) into storage and have the apartment locks changed.

Divorce was hell, but she’d rather that than keep Henry in a home where his mother and step-father constantly argued. At least this way, she was the only one getting hurt.

Emma tore her thoughts away from Killian and back to the task at hand. Henry had never yet been to a funeral in his short life, and she didn’t want his first to come completely out of the blue like this. On the other hand, going to the funeral of someone he’d never met might serve as a gentle preparation for when he did inevitably have to go to a funeral he was more emotionally invested in. On the other side of the argument, Emma hadn’t spoken to Marina for ten years. They’d fallen out of touch soon after graduation – Marina moved around frequently to try and further her singing career and Neal (and subsequently Henry) had happened to Emma in fairly short order afterwards. But they had made a pact on that last day together, toasting their friendship and the last time they’d ever see each other as a foursome. None of them had truly believed that it would be the last time at the time. Even though she hadn’t been able to honour it whilst Marina was still alive, Emma was determined to do so now. She wondered what Belle and Mary Margaret were doing now. Belle had kept in touch the longest, but even she had lost touch eventually. Emma wondered if their lives had treated them in the same way that hers had, or indeed Marina’s had treated her. Emma shivered at the thought and pushed it to the back of her mind.

“Come on kid,” she called to Henry. “Put your good shoes on, you’re coming with me.”

“Do I have to?” Henry moaned. “I can get on perfectly well by myself.”

“Henry, you’re ten. I’m not leaving you home alone. I’d come back to find the apartment on fire.”

“You’re my mum,” Henry said, coming into the hallway and beginning to put his best shoes on with obvious reluctance. “You should have more faith in me than that.”

Emma responded with a raised eyebrow. “Says the boy who was so disappointed that they didn’t sell real lava on Amazon.”

“One failed volcano and you lose all trust in me.”

“Henry, we were cleaning orange food colouring off the kitchen ceiling for three weeks after that fiasco,” Emma pointed out. “Come on, we’re giving Granny a lift to the funeral and we’ll be late if we’re not careful.”

Granny was about the only person from college with whom Emma _had_ kept in touch, mainly because the cocoa at Granny’s diner was unlike anything else available in any coffee shop in the city – Emma would wager the entire county. Granny’s had been one of the staple meeting spots of college students in Emma’s day, she and her trio of friends being no exception, and although its popularity had faded a little with the advent of Starbucks en masse and free wifi, Granny still held a soft spot for all the students who had passed through her doors.

The older woman was waiting outside the diner for them; she seemed rather surprised to see Henry sitting in the back of the yellow bug.

“My sitter cancelled,” Emma said by way of explanation. “So Henry’s coming with us.”

“It’s a shame,” Granny said. “Growing boys shouldn’t spend sunny August mornings in a chapel of rest.” She paused. “Ruby and Steve are around, if he wants to stay around the diner. They’ll keep an eye on him. Keep him away from the hotplate.”

Henry’s face lit up – Granny’s had a large outside seating area at the back that was perfect for miniature one-man ball games – at the same time as Emma said “Henry, if you set one foot inside the kitchen, you’ll be sorry.”

Ruby came out of the diner to wave them off as Henry scrambled out of the car.

“You don’t mind, do you Ruby? Just for a couple of hours?”

“No problem.” Ruby turned to Henry and grinned. “Want to help me put the parasols out? They make great lightsabers.”

“Ruby, you’re twenty-five, not five…” Granny called after them, but her granddaughter paid her no heed. She shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder who’s more of a corrupting influence on whom.”

X

It wasn’t like Mary Margaret Nolan was stalking her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Of course she wasn’t. She knew where he lived because she had a friend who lived in the same building. She knew where he worked because he’d worked there before they split up. She knew that he got coffee for himself and… _her_ … every morning at seven fifteen because she happened to walk past his local coffee shop every morning at seven fifteen on her way to work. She knew that he snuck out to get Chinese takeaway for lunch on Thursdays (because _she_ was a ruthless calorie counter) because…

Ok, there was no excuse for that one. She had spent all of the school holidays in the first few months after he left sitting on a bench opposite the pet store with dark glasses on, hiding behind various large and intelligent books but only reading about half a page a day.

Mary Margaret sighed and spat out her mouthful of toothpaste. She could see the alarm clock in the bathroom mirror, the numbers 07:14 reflected backwards in the glass. Any moment now he’d be walking into the shop for two black coffees. David had always taken cream and two sugars in his coffee when they’d been together. Mary Margaret took hers black with one sugar, and yet she still bought coffee creamer every time she went grocery shopping. It wasn’t her fault that she still loved him beyond belief. Even though he wasn’t hers any longer, she couldn’t just sever all the ties with him. They had known each other so well, and Mary Margaret had been convinced that they’d been soulmates. She’d known there was something special about him from the first moment they’d met – he’d been working at the animal shelter and she’d been chaperoning a school fieldtrip, and they’d spent the entire time passing snide comments back and forth over the class’s heads. She’d found him rude and presumptuous, he’d found her bristling and defensive, and when she’d found the injured dove in the park the next day, he was immediately the first person that she’d thought of. They’d been together ever since.

Well. Nearly ever since.

She’d always known that David had a bit of an ego on him, and that he was a terrible liar. It hadn’t been hard to connect the dots when he quit the animal shelter to set up his own pet store, when he’d stopped taking sugar and cream. Regina had dug her claws into him. She’d seen him, decided she like the look of him, and had simply taken him, right from under Mary Margaret’s nose. She’d known the way to make him tick, hinting to him that he could be so much more than just an animal shelter worker; he could move up in the world to a brighter, better future. Naturally, a state elementary school teacher was not going to be a help on this path to greatness.

Mary Margaret let him go quietly. There wasn’t going to be any use in fighting. Not against Regina, with all her contacts in local government. Regina, who could get her fired and stop her teaching, the thing she loved second-most in the world after David.

The clock read seven twenty-two. She was going to have to get a move on if she was going to make it to Marina’s funeral on time. Mary Margaret didn’t like the city; she was far happier on the outskirts, and the service was being held slap bang in the centre, which meant navigating her old reliable (sadly becoming increasingly unreliable) car around the terrifying metropolis. By the time she had arrived, found a parking space and coughed up a ludicrous amount of change to a parking meter that seemed to simply eat it, she was one of the last people to enter the chapel before the doors closed and the service began. She slipped into a seat at the back and looked around the other faces in the crowd to see if there was anyone else she recognised, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Emma’s long blonde waves a few rows in front of her, next to Granny. And there was Belle, a few seats over from Emma. Mary Margaret’s heart drummed in her chest; they had been so close and they hadn’t spoken for so long. It was awful to think that it had taken a tragedy to bring them back together. With a jolt she realised that this would be the last time that all four of them would ever be together in the same room, and Marina was not on the earthly plane to witness it. The thought made her begin to weep, and she fished around in her bag for a tissue.

Eric was the last to enter, with Vanessa on his arm wearing a ridiculously over the top black veil. Mary Margaret narrowed her eyes; as if Vanessa cared about Marina. The teacher had kept up with Marina’s achievements over the years, a voracious reader of the gossip magazines, and she had followed the very public breakdown of her marriage. She should have called. Written. Done something. But she had been too wrapped up in her own wandering husband, and now Marina was dead and there was nothing to be done.

The service was beautiful, but Mary Margaret couldn’t appreciate it, not with so many thoughts running through her head. She’d spent half the time wondering whether or not it would be a good idea to try and grab Belle and Emma for a chat or whether it would be better to leave them be and pretend that she hadn’t recognised them. For all that she hadn’t kept in touch with Marina, she hadn’t been any better with either of the other members of their sisterhood.

In the end, someone else made the decision for her, as a firm but friendly hand caught her elbow as she passed out of the chapel. Mary Margaret turned to find Belle standing there, smiling but with an undeniable hint of nervousness in her eyes.

“Mary Margaret! The last time I saw you, you had curls down to here.” Belle gestured to her hipline and Mary Margaret suddenly felt very aware of her pixie crop. “It’s been so long… too long… I should have written more, I’m sorry, and to think that this is what’s brought us together again…”

There was a moment of awkwardness before Belle threw her arms around Mary Margaret.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she continued.

“Me too, Belle.”

“Hey, why am I missing out on the hugs?”

Mary Margaret looked up to see Emma standing behind them, and Belle released her dark-haired friend to repeat her greeting to the blonde. When the initial introductions and pleasantries had passed, the three women fell into silence again, at a loss for what to say.

“I wonder why she did it?” Mary Margaret mused aloud, voicing the thought that had been turning itself over and over in her brain ever since she had seen the headlines on the news.

“I think the reason’s standing over there,” Emma said darkly, nodding in the direction of Eric and Vanessa. “Ugh, he should be ashamed of himself, parading her around like that here.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

“We should get out of here,” Belle suggested. “We need to catch up, chat, so much has happened since we last saw each other and it would be a shame for this to be the only time we meet up again after graduation. We could do lunch or something.”

In that moment, it was almost like they were back at college discussing what they were going to do that day. No-one commented on Marina’s absence, but Mary Margaret was certain that they all felt it acutely.

Emma was the first to break the silence.

“I can’t, I’m sorry. I brought Granny, I have to go and drop her off and pick up Henry from the diner.”

“Are you listening to yourself, Miss Swan?”

Mary Margaret jumped at the new voice and turned to see Granny standing behind them, looking in equal parts amused and exasperated.

“’I have to pick up Henry from the diner’ indeed. Where did you think you were going to eat lunch?”

X

Belle had tried to stay positive during lunch. It had been easy at first, because despite the discouraging situation that had brought them together, there was lots to be positive about. There was so much news to be caught up on, and of course there was Henry – Belle couldn’t believe how much he’d grown, surely it was only a year or so since she’d first seen him as a baby, since he’d been smaller than little Bae next door.

But as time had gone on and they’d got more up to date in the cataloguing of their lives since graduation, it was harder and harder to stay upbeat. Both her friends were going through messy divorces, and Belle was only hanging onto her own marriage by her very fingertips.

“I’m glad you’re still married, Belle,” Emma said. “At least one of us got it right.”

Belle shook her head. “I didn’t,” she murmured, and in spite of it all, it felt good to say it. “Gaston and I are… having some problems.” That was putting it mildly. “We’re in marriage guidance therapy. We separated six months ago.”

“Oh honey…” Mary Margaret reached across the table and held Belle’s hand, taking Emma’s with the other. “I’m sorry… But at least you’re fighting to make it right.”

Belle nodded. She just wished she knew if it was worth fighting for.

The three women looked at each other, and Emma’s face took on a determined expression. Belle remembered that expression from college, the one that meant Emma was going to do something and she would not stop until she had succeeded. She wondered if she wore that expression when she was hunting down bail-jumpers. Emma Swan always gets her man…

“We can’t fall out of touch again,” Emma said. “We’ve got each other now, we can help each other through it all. We were too late for Marina, but we’re not too late for each other. So it’s taken us a while to live up to our promise, but we’re here together now.”

Mary Margaret and Belle nodded their assent.

“So, same time, same place, next week?” Emma suggested.

“School starts next week,” Mary Margaret pointed out. “I’ll be working.”

“So will I,” Belle added. She had a term contract as a school librarian starting; it was on the other side of town from Granny’s and she only had a thirty minute lunch break. Emma looked a little disappointed, until Belle suggested, “how about dinner? It would have to be a fortnight’s time, I need to reschedule some sessions, but you can all come round to mine. I need to prove to my neighbours I do actually have a life outside of work, books and therapy.”

It was all settled within a matter of moments, and the three women went their separate ways. Belle was the last to leave. She smiled as she passed through the door of the diner. She hadn’t set foot in Granny’s for so long, and yet it was still familiar, still felt like home.

It was strange that a day that had begun with a funeral should end on such a positive note. Suddenly things didn’t seem so bleak after all. A friendship had been rekindled, and that was something that should be celebrated.


	4. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is discussion of alibis, roses, and a field trip.

“Henry…” Emma began. It was two days after Marina’s funeral and she’d had the worst day in the history of bad days. At least it was a Friday and she could relax with a glass of wine. Or maybe the whole bottle. Or maybe she’d decide to screw the wine and go for something rather stronger.

“Yes, Mum?” Henry replied without looking up from his book.

“You love me, right”

“Of course I do.”

“So if I murdered Killian, you’d provide me with an alibi, right?”

“Of course I would.” Henry reached the end of his chapter and carefully bookmarked the page. Emma found it inspiring how her son could be so completely calm with the prospect of her killing his stepfather in cold blood. She flopped down onto the sofa beside him and gave a low groan.

“I’ll take it that the meeting didn’t go too well,” Henry said mildly. Emma snorted. ‘Didn’t go too well’ was the understatement of the century. Once again, the meeting had degenerated into a shouting match across the table between the two invested persons, with the lawyers trying desperately to prevent the hysterics from resulting in physical blows. They simply weren’t getting anywhere. Both parties were just too bitter to want to work towards a profitable and peaceful conclusion for all. Emma, the injured one in the scenario as she kept pointing out, was resentful that Killian felt he deserved quite as much money as he was claiming from her. He was the one who had taken another woman on a business trip to Paris, for crying out loud. But the main problem stemmed from the fact that Killian, for all his flaws, was extremely canny and had a lawyer who could easily pass for Satan on a bad day. Emma’s own lawyer…

“I fired my lawyer,” she mumbled to Henry, who sighed.

“Again?” he said. “Mum, that’s the third one! You’re going to run out of available lawyers soon. Either that or they’ll refuse to work for you, saying that you’re unreasonable.”

“I’m unreasonable? Killian’s the one being unreasonable!” She sighed. Maybe it would be easier to just capitulate and have it all over and done with. In a way, she envied Mary Margaret and the comparative ease of her own divorce proceedings, which were by no means plain sailing but a breeze compared to Emma’s. But Emma was a fighter against the small injustices in her world and she always had been. As long as Henry was all right, she would keep fighting for as long as she had to. She would make Killian sorry he crossed her. Just as soon as she found another lawyer.

Henry scooted closer to his mother on the sofa and put his arms around her. “So what happened this time?” he asked.

“Killian wants to sell our common property and split the profits,” Emma explained. “That in itself isn’t the problem. The problem comes when we start arguing over what precisely _is_ common property. So far, we’ve split all of our possessions into ‘mine’ and ‘his’ and even that we can’t decide on.”

“Are we going to have to move?” Henry asked. For the first time since Emma had announced that she and Killian were splitting up, her son looked genuinely concerned, and Emma felt a pang of guilt and sympathy.

“No way, kid. This apartment’s all ours. I made very sure that Killian’s signature went nowhere near it. It’s mainly business stuff. Killian is determined that his business assets are His All His, and has conveniently forgotten that I’m a major shareholder in his company and I helped him set up the New York office.”

That was another reason for the split. When they had first got together they’d had something to work on, a joint project to bind them together. But once it was over and Killian’s business was going from strength to strength once more, there was no outside influence to unite them. She pondered for a while.

“There’s always the boat, I suppose.”

Henry raised one eyebrow. “Killian would never let you take the Jolly. It’s his pride and joy.”

“I know. Would it be very petty of me to say that I want to take it simply because of that?”

“Yes, it would. But I won’t hold it against you. You are my mum after all.”

Emma ruffled her son’s hair and he batted her away, trying to smooth it back into place.

“Oh Henry. Am I ever going to meet a guy – apart from you – who isn’t a complete…” She struggled for a non-offensive word; she corrupted her son enough as it was.

“Scoundrel?” Henry suggested.

“It works.” Emma shrugged. “I’m swearing off men for life now. You’re witness to this. If I ever give any inclination of liking a man every again, you have full permission to call me out on it. Or send me to a nunnery. And if by some mad twist of fate I do end up married again, I’m getting a pre-nup.”

Henry laughed and Emma smiled properly for the first time since she had entered the meeting room that morning. She’d get by, as long as she had Henry, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to plot various methods of painful revenge against her husband in the mean time.

X

Belle came out of her therapy session more confused and irritated than she had entered it, but then again, this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. This time, they had spent the session talking about Marina in the main, and Belle had been trying not to wallow in guilt at not having been there for her friend at the end of it. When the timer in Blue’s office had gone off and the other woman had practically shooed Belle out of the door with the parting comment ‘I think we made real progress today’, Belle could have strangled her. Instead, she narrowed her eyes at the now-closed door that she had just come out of. Somehow she didn’t think that Blue had ever felt the way that Belle herself was feeling, because surely a woman that sly and shady couldn’t have any sort of friends. Minions, perhaps. Minions who were probably reptilian. Or perhaps flying monkeys.

She heard a chuckle behind her and whirled round, blushing furiously when she realised that she had been chuntering her thoughts to herself under her breath. Dr Hopper was standing in the doorway to his own office off the waiting area.

“Do you need someone to talk to, Ms Chevalier?” he asked. “You seem as though you could do with letting off some steam.”

Belle sighed and ran a hand through her hair, forgetting that she put it up in the morning and subsequently getting it tangled. She fought to extricate her fingers from the mess of curls and pins. “Thank you for the offer, Dr Hopper. It’s most appreciated, but I feel that when one needs therapy to get over one’s therapy session, something has gone drastically wrong somewhere along the line.”

“I wasn’t intending it to be a shrink session,” Dr Hopper pointed out. “But if you do ever want to vent your feelings in a way that Fae Blue does not encourage, perhaps, then you know where I am.”

Belle nodded. “Thank you, Dr Hopper.”

The other psychiatrist smiled and was about to go back into his office when a voice made him pause and made Belle turn.

“Belle?”

It was Gaston, looking slightly confused and holding a very large bouquet of red roses.

“Gaston,” Belle said. “Fancy seeing you here.” She gave the flowers a quizzical look. “Why have you brought roses to your therapy session?”

He quickly masked his look of surprise and grinned before holding out the bouquet to her. “They’re for you, of course. I was going to bring them round later but since you’re here…”

Belle accepted the roses with a smile, and she felt a genuine swell of happiness as she inhaled their light scent. This was what she had been missing from their relationship. When she had said that she wanted to go back to the beginning, to the way they had been before, this was what she had been talking about. She wanted to be courted again, made to feel special. Bought flowers at inopportune times.

“Thank you,” she said, and stood up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “They’re beautiful.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dr Hopper give a small smile and vanish discreetly back into his office.

Gaston shifted from foot to foot a little nervously. “I was thinking, Belle… Dr Blue keeps saying that we need to make the time to reconnect and get to know each other better again, so I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me on Monday? You know, like a date. Dinner and dancing at the Palace Hotel.” He raised one eyebrow suggestively. “I could book us a room…”

Belle’s heart skipped and she was fairly sure that she was beaming from ear to ear. Finally, this was Gaston taking the initiative in the saving of their marriage. This was a return to what they’d always used to have when they’d first married – clandestine overnight stays in nice places just because they could.

“I’d love to,” she said. Certainly, they still had a lot of work to do, and Belle wasn’t entirely sure that wining, dining and falling into bed together was quite the most sensible option at this stage of the game, but it was a start. As long as she didn’t drink too much she could keep her head and quit whilst she was ahead. She was so glad that Blue finally seemed to be having an effect on Gaston – maybe she’d guilt-tripped him into paying more attention to the wife that he was trying to get back together with.

“I’ll have to come straight from the office,” Gaston continued, “so I’ll see you there? Eight o’clock sound ok?”

Belle nodded. She wasn’t doing anything else. She was never doing anything else. She wondered what Mulan would say when she told her. She would either be exasperated with her for giving Gaston yet another chance, or happy that her friend was no longer miserable.

At that moment, Blue called Gaston into her office, and Belle waited until they were both out of earshot beyond the door before doing a little dance of happiness on the spot. She decided on second thoughts that it might be easier for all parties involved if she simply didn’t tell Mulan about her date. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.

Belle left the building still smiling.

X

Mary Margaret loved the first week of term, and this week was no exception. She loved the hustle and bustle, she loved being surrounded by the children again, she loved meeting new faces and getting to know a new class. She would admit though, that she could have done without this fieldtrip. It was never meant to be during the first week of term, but it had been postponed so many times during the previous school year that the head-teacher had thought it best to get it over and done with as soon as possible lest it be as fraught with disaster as the previous attempts had been.

So that was why, on the Friday afternoon of her first week back at school, Mary Margaret found herself herding several over-excited school children around City Hall.

At least a field trip inevitably meant Jefferson’s company for the duration, and Jefferson was always good company. He had been chaperoning school trips for a long time – his wife had taught at the school before her tragic early death and their daughter was in Mary Margaret’s class this year. He was ever so slightly mad, and as a result the kids loved him. Mary Margaret knew that no matter what her mood might be, she would always be able to rely on Jefferson to make her feel better. They were currently standing in the lobby watching over the kids, who were being told a potted history of the building by one of the more child-friendly tour guides. Jefferson was nursing a coffee in one hand and his head in the other – apparently the couple who lived above him were newly-weds and were still very much in their honeymoon period.

“I don’t know how Grace sleeps through it, I really don’t,” he was saying. “I would complain if it weren’t for the fact I know that Alice and I were probably twice as bad. Grace arrived nine months to the day after our wedding.”

Mary Margaret tried not to laugh, and hid her failure behind her hand politely. Jefferson simply rolled his bleary eyes. “Don’t try to tell me that you and David didn’t have your moments.”

“Oh, we did. We did.”

But they didn’t any more, and Mary Margaret didn’t want to have any ‘moments’ with anyone else right now. Jefferson caught her sad smile and patted her arm.

“I’m sorry, poppet. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Mary Margaret shrugged. “It’s ok. It’s been months now. I need to get used to it sooner or later. I just can’t seem to really accept that this is the end though.”

“Hmm.” Jefferson’s expression suddenly became closed, and Mary Margaret’s brow furrowed until she saw that he was fixed on a point somewhere behind her left shoulder. “Well, don’t look now.” She heard him sigh as she turned her head minutely to see what he was looking at. “I said _don’t_ look.”

David was in the foyer. When he gave saw Mary Margaret watching him, he gave an awkward little wave. Mary Margaret couldn’t help but return it.

“Ahem.”

She whipped her head back round to see Regina standing in front of her, a disarmingly benign expression on her face but the corner of her lip threatening to curl up in an unpleasant smile.

“Ms Blanchard,” she said. “How nice to see you here. Although, I would have thought that your time would be better spent watching over your… pupils… rather than fixing your eyes elsewhere.”

“It’s Mrs Nolan,” Mary Margaret said, her teeth gritted.

“Pardon?”

“My name is Mrs Nolan. Not Ms Blanchard.”

Regina’s smile finally won out and her whole face took on a nasty, triumphant aspect.

“Well, _Mrs Nolan_. Let me give you a piece of advice.” She leaned in and hissed into Mary Margaret’s ear. “He’s not yours anymore.”

With that she was gone, stalking past the two chaperones towards David. Mary Margaret’s eyes followed her, and she felt her face burning with equal shame and anger.

“Poppet. Mary. Mary!” Jefferson’s hand on her arm was firm and his voice persistent. “She’s not worth it. He’s not worth it. If they’re happy together then neither of them are worth it.”

“I know, Jeff… I just can’t help thinking that maybe I should have fought more… Shouldn’t have let him go so easily… I get these moments where I just want to smack her round that smirking face of hers, and then I feel bad afterwards even though I never actually hurt her.”

Jefferson sighed and put one arm around her in a half hug. “You worry too much about other people, you know that. Maybe it’s time to start being selfish for once. Have a little faith in yourself that you can be happy as well as other people. Your happiness doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be unhappy, but you do seem to get it into your head that in order for everyone else to be happy you have to be miserable.”

Mary Margaret sighed. Jefferson had a point. But life seemed so much easier this way.

“Perhaps don’t punch her in the mouth though,” Jefferson added as an afterthought, but he didn’t sound all that convinced that the course of action wasn’t a good idea. Mary Margaret laughed, and by the time the tour guide had finished her explanation, the young teacher was smiling again. Maybe she did deserve happiness, and maybe it was time for her to do something about it.


	5. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is no dinner, no dancing, and a stuffed stegosaurus.

“Dad, you know I love you but I have to go now, I have things to do.”

_“Things to do? Bluebell, you never have things to do on a Tuesday morning until you go to work.”_

Belle sighed and resisted the urge to throw the phone against the wall. She knew that her dad was going to call her – he always called her on a Tuesday morning (Australia-time) as that was his ‘early’ day when he went to the nursery to collect the latest stock for the shop, so he would chat to her during the long drive. She hadn’t known that he was going to be rather more chatty than usual today. She was as close to her dad as she could be, considering that he was in Australia and she was in New York, but they had never been the type of people who could talk for hours on end about nothing special.

“Dad, I’m fifteen hours behind you, remember?” she said. “It’s still early Monday evening here. And I do have things to do on this particular Monday evening.”

_“Oh. Ok then. What kind of things?”_

Belle smiled to herself. “I’m going on a date.”

_“Really? Who with?”_

“Gaston, Dad, who do you think?”

_“Well, I don’t know, this whole separation business seems to be a very complicated kettle of fish. But I’m glad you two have come to your senses and you’re back together. I’ve been getting worried, Belle.”_

“Well, we’re not back together yet,” Belle said. “Not properly at any rate.”              

_“At least it’s a start.”_

Belle smiled again. “Yes. It’s definitely a start.  I think this time we’ve definitely got potential.”

_“Well in that case, I’d better let you get on. Enjoy your date, Bluebell.”_

“Thanks, Dad.”

She hung up and tossed the phone onto the sideboard, rushing around to get ready. She’d spent two days agonising about what to wear and she still hadn’t fully made up her mind.

When she was finally dressed, Belle felt like she was walking on air as she stepped out of her building and hailed a taxi. Perhaps life was finally looking up for her and she’d have some positive news to tell Mary Margaret and Emma when they came over on Friday. The drive to the Palace Hotel didn’t take as long as she was expecting, and Belle arrived with plenty of time before eight o’clock. She stood in the foyer of the hotel, wondering what to do and how to kill the time. Belle brought a hand up to her hair, trying to ascertain that it was still in place, and a thought struck her. If Gaston had booked a room then she might as well make use of it rather than hanging around in the lobby and fixing her make-up in the toilets. She went over to the reception desk.

“Has my husband booked a room here tonight?” she asked. “The name is Chevalier.”

The receptionist paused for a long moment as she typed in the name, and Belle saw her cast her eyes over the rings on her left hand. She quirked an eyebrow, so quickly that Belle almost missed it, and her wry little smile became perfectly polite again as she handed over a keycard.

“Room 206 Mrs Chevalier. I hope your stay with us is satisfactory.”

When Belle found room 206, the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door gave her pause, but she put it to the back of her mind. Perhaps Gaston had come from the office early and had come to freshen up in the room before dinner. She let herself in and immediately was set on edge, because the first thing she saw on entering the room was a pair of black stilettos.

_The receptionist gave me the wrong room key_ , she said to herself, a tiny little voice in the back of her mind trying desperately to reassure her, but she knew that it was in vain. She crept through the room, following the trail of clothing, and her heart beat painfully in her chest when she heard a female voice call out. A familiar female voice.

“I’m in the bathroom, honey. The tub’s just run.”

Belle felt her world begin to come crashing down around her ears in that moment. It was like watching an avalanche starting at the top of a mountain and knowing that there was nothing she could do to stop it or save herself. She should go. She should turn on her heel and leave quietly, give no indication that she had even been there. But she was angry. Failing to save her marriage was one thing. Failing to save her marriage because her husband was having an affair was quite another. Failing to save her marriage because her husband was having an affair and had agreed to meet his mistress on the same day and in the same place as he was taking his wife on a date was another thing entirely. Belle pushed open the bathroom door and stood in the frame, waiting for the woman putting on her lipstick in the mirror to realise that the person who had entered the room was not the one she was expecting.

Dr Blue squealed like a scalded piglet and scrambled for something to cover up with. Belle, her anger still burning bright as the avalanche continued down the mental mountain, slammed the bathroom door shut behind her and moved two paces to the left to stand in front of the towel rail. She folded her arms.

_Yes, you’d better squeal and blush, lady. Why should I make this any more comfortable for you?_

“Would you care to explain what you are doing in my husband’s hotel room, Dr Blue?” she asked calmly. “Naked, no less?”

“Belle, I understand that this has come as rather a shock to you, but could I just…” She nodded towards the towel rail.

“No.” Belle said through gritted teeth. “Explain first.”

Before Blue could say anything though, Belle heard the hotel room door open again.

“Babe?” Gaston’s voice called.

Neither woman spoke. Belle narrowed her eyes, daring the other woman to respond.

“Babe?”

Gaston opened the bathroom door, and Belle could see in the mirror the moment that all the colour literally drained from his face.

“To which one of us were you referring, Gaston?” she asked icily.

“Belle…”

“Don’t you dare say ‘what are you doing here?’ You know damn well what I’m doing here.” Belle shook her head, raising her hands but letting them drop back to her sides when she couldn’t think of what to occupy them with. “All this time. All this time I’ve been trying so hard to fix us. All this time you’ve been telling me that it’s my fault. All this time I’ve been feeling so guilty. All this time you’ve been going behind my back. Both of you! I trusted you both!”

“Belle, I’m sorry.”

Belle whirled round to face her husband. “Sorry? Sorry for sleeping with the therapist? Sorry that I had to find out like this? Or simply sorry you got caught?”

“Belle, don’t be irrational…”

“Gaston,” Blue began, inching closer to the towel rail. “Belle is angry and upset, and she has every right to be.”

Belle pulled all the towels off the rail and flung them into the tub, causing water to flood over the sides.

“Great. I’m so glad I have your permission to be upset considering you’ve been screwing my husband as well as screwing with my head!” She shook her head again, the building rage beginning to subside. “You two deserve each other,” she said sadly, pushing past Gaston to leave the room.

Belle maintained her composure as she got down the stairs, handed her keycard back to the receptionist – so that was what that little quirk had been about – and left the hotel. She had gone about three yards before she stopped and let the avalanche hit the bottom of the mountain. She broke down and began to run, barely able to see through her tears. She just wanted to be as far away as possible, and mourn the categorical end of her marriage in peace.

X

Belle was still running when she reached the flat half an hour later, and she slumped against the door as she looked for her keys. The diamonds in her engagement ring – two small brilliants flanking a sapphire – flashed in the dim light and the sight made her burst into a fresh flood of tears. Sad and angry in equal measure, she wrenched the ring off her finger and threw it across the hall, watching it skitter out of sight under the radiator. She tried to do the same to her wedding ring but it stuck; she hadn’t taken it off since they’d married. Belle slid down the door and curled up, swallowed by her misery.

“Belle?”

She looked up on hearing the soft voice. Mr Gold was leaning out of his front door looking concerned. He came out fully and crouched down beside her, his hand warm and solid on her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… me… Gaston… hotel… my therapist…” Belle struggled to put everything that had just happened to her into a coherent sentence and gave up, burying her face in her hands. Mr Gold’s hand squeezed her shoulder.

“Come on,” he said. “You need a drink. And I’m not talking about a cup of tea.”

Belle blinked and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand.

“What about Bae?” she asked.

Mr Gold smiled. “He’s asleep. I don’t think he’ll begrudge his poor old dad a whiskey or two with a sad neighbour. Come in.”

He handed her off the floor and ushered her into his flat, taking her coat and hanging it on the hooks in the hallway next to Bae’s bright red raincoat. Belle eased off her shoes, and it was only then that she realised just how far she had run in her impractical heels. Her feet were raw and bleeding in several places; it had soaked through her stockings and stained the pale leather on the inside of the stilettos. She made to follow her host through to the living room and stopped short.

“I’m so sorry, did I get you out of bed?”

“What? Ah…” Gold looked down at his attire and laughed. “No. Bath time turned into a veritable Battle of Trafalgar. I think I got wetter than Bae did.”

Belle tiptoed into the living room on her suddenly painful feet and sat down on the sofa, peering through into the kitchen and watching Gold take down Scotch and crystal tumblers from a high cupboard. She had never yet seen him wearing anything less formal than suit trousers and a dress shirt, very rarely without a tie; to see him now in t-shirt, plaid pyjama pants and flannel dressing-gown was odd, but not unwelcome. He brought the glasses through and held one out to Belle.

“Unless you would prefer tea, of course.”

Belle shook her head and grabbed the tumbler, downing the generous measure in one. Gold said nothing and simply handed her the other glass before leaving the room again. He returned a few moments later with a tray laden with warm water, towels and a first aid box.

“Let’s get your feet seen to,” he said, setting the tray on the coffee table and politely turning his back so that Belle could hike up her dress and pull her stockings down.

It took a while for them to actually get the hosiery off altogether – Gold had since sat back on the sofa beside her and taken her feet in his lap – as the blood had begun to dry and glue the nylons to her wounds, and by the end, Belle couldn’t tell whether she was crying in pain or in sadness. She sighed, she thought that she would have cried herself dry by now. Gold didn’t push it, didn’t press for what had happened, he just tended to her feet and let her drink his whiskey. He was there, and that was what mattered. And that was what made her open up and spill her guts about what had happened that evening.

Gold listened, making no comment at the end of the tale. Belle clutched the tumbler close to her chest, savouring the burn from the spirit. “I just can’t believe I didn’t see it,” she mumbled. “I was so stupid and naïve.”

“Stop that.” Gold’s voice was stern and he looked up from dabbing antiseptic onto her bloody blisters. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. That therapist’s been getting you to blame yourself for too long. This is not your fault, Belle. Never let anyone tell you differently. Whatever your damn fool of a husband did, it was of his own volition. You are bright, and brave, and beautiful, and if Gaston wants to throw that all away for a fling with a naked psychiatrist then that’s his loss.”

Belle was a little taken aback by his vehemence, but his eyes were completely in earnest. For the first time since she had walked into the hotel room, she managed a small smile.

“Thank you, Mr Gold.”

He returned her smile.

“I do have a first name, you know.”

“You do? I thought it was ‘mister’.”

He rolled his eyes as he screwed the top back on the antiseptic. “It’s Rum.”

Belle looked down at the glass in her hand. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s whiskey.”

“No, my name.”

“Rum? Really?”

“Well, Raymond. But everyone shortens it to Rum. For the love of the almighty, please don’t call me Ray. Now, I’m afraid that Spiderman band-aids will have to suffice.”

Belle gave a little giggle and let him put the colourful plasters over her worst cuts. Once he was done, he carefully placed her feet onto the footstool, and they fell into a companionable silence for a while. She was incredibly grateful that she had been blessed with such lovely neighbours, and she realised that Rum had been in pretty much the same position as she was under a year ago – his wife had left him and Bae for another man, prompting their move to the self-same apartment she was sitting in. He knew what she was feeling, and he knew what she needed to help her through it.

“How did you cope?” Belle asked him. “When you knew your marriage was over, I mean.”

“I was alternately sad and furious, on both my behalf and Bae’s. But I got through it. As will you, in time. I promise. It feels horrible now but you will feel better.”

Belle nodded. The quiet stretched on, but it was not unpleasant.

Presently Rum excused himself to the bathroom and Belle was left alone. She looked down at her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to take it off or not now. Rum still wore his and he’d been divorced at least nine months.

“Daddy?”

Belle twisted and looked over the back of the sofa to see Bae standing in the living room doorway in his superhero pyjamas. “He’s in the bathroom, sweetheart. He’ll be back in a minute.”

“Oh.” The boy blinked, sleepy and confused. “Hello Mrs Belle.”

Bae nodded and came into the room, dragging an extremely large stuffed dinosaur along with him. He scrambled up onto the sofa beside her and looked at her feet with his head on one side.

“Did you hurt your feet, Mrs Belle?”

 “You can call me just Belle. You don’t need the Mrs. And yes, I did hurt my feet. But your daddy made them better.”

Bae nodded. “He’s good at that.”

“I’m good at what?” Rum returned to the living room and stood in front of his son. “You, young man, are in my seat.”

Bae shrugged. “You’re good at making things better.”

“I try my best. Now, it is way past your bedtime, son. And it’s way past Steggy’s bedtime too. Can’t you see him yawning?”

Gold picked up his son and balanced him on his hip, making sure the dinosaur was tucked in safely between them. “Say goodnight to Belle.”

“G’night Belle.” Bae paused. “Steggy says goodnight too.”

“Goodnight Bae, goodnight Steggy.”

Father and son left the room, and Belle couldn’t help but smile after them. When Gold returned, he was limping more heavily than normal and holding a pile of post.

“Carrying him kills my ankle but I’ll miss it when he’s too big for it.” He held out the letters. “We’ve got a new postman, apparently he can’t tell the difference between a five and a six. These are yours, I forgot earlier.”

Belle took the post and sliced open the letters. A couple of bills, some adverts, and one hand written note. Belle’s brow furrowed and she settled to read it.

_Dear Belle_ , it began, _I know it’s been a long time since we’ve spoken, but…_

Belle’s stomach twisted; it was a letter from Marina. She continued to read on as her friend poured out her troubles on the written page.

_… I wish I had Emma’s independence, Mary Margaret’s optimism, and your courage. Maybe in the end, Eric isn’t the problem. Maybe loneliness is. Take care of each other._

_Love, Marina_

Belle put down the letter. She thought about Marina and Eric. She thought about Emma and Killian. She thought about Mary Margaret and David, and she thought about herself and Gaston.

And she began to form a plan.


	6. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a meeting, another meeting, and musings on a hypothetical zombie apocalypse.

The first meeting of their unofficial club of three took place the day after Belle’s revelation at the hotel. On calling her friends and learning that they too had received goodbye letters from Marina, Belle had decided that they needed to meet and discuss these new developments sooner rather than later. The same evening found the three women in Granny’s, each buoyed up with a large glass of wine and the letters in a neat stack on the table between them.

“With the psychiatrist!” Mary Margaret exclaimed. Belle nodded sadly; she had just finished telling them the story of the night before. “What a fucking bastard!”

Belle was fairly certain she had never heard Mary Margaret use any kind of curse word stronger than ‘damn’ before, and she was secretly pleased that it had been the severity of Gaston’s actions that had caused the usually mild-mannered teacher to break the habit of a lifetime.

“You should have thrown her in the tub as well,” Emma muttered darkly.

“Is it even legal?” Mary Margaret continued, her brow furrowing. “It’s unethical and unprofessional, even if it’s not unlawful. She was charging you a not-insubstantial amount of money, ostensibly trying to help you fix your marriage, but all the time she’s been hindering your progress by not only sleeping with your husband but also pressing all your buttons. And she still kept taking your money.”

“It’s fraud, plain and simple,” Emma agreed. A lump came to Belle’s throat; she hadn’t thought about it like that. She swallowed it down and spoke again.

“Something’s got to be done,” she said. “We can’t let them get away with this. They’ve hurt us enough, it’s time for payback.” She touched the pile of letters and Emma caught her hand.

“For Marina,” the blonde affirmed. “We’ll do this in her name. It’s time to give our husbands a taste of their own medicine. Are you in, Mary Margaret?”

“I don’t know.” Their dark-haired friend’s face was anguished and unsure. “I want justice for Marina, and for you too, and for me; I want it more than anything. But I love David. Even after everything he’s done, I can’t just stop loving him. I couldn’t bear it if he was harmed.”

“Oh Mary…” Belle reached across and patted Mary Margaret’s shoulder. “I wasn’t suggesting that we sent Jefferson round with a two-by-four to beat them into submission.”

“You weren’t?” Emma sounded slightly disappointed.

Belle ignored her and continued. “What’s the one thing our soon-to-be-ex-husbands all have in common?”

“They’re all philandering asses?” Mary Margaret proposed weakly.

“Apart from all being philandering asses,” Belle added quickly. “They all own or are partners in successful companies. Killian’s got his shipping, Gaston’s a partner at the publishing house and David’s got the pet store. And we all supported them in their business endeavours, and they all threw it back at us. So where will it hurt them the most if we hit it?”

Mary Margaret grinned. “The bank balance.”

“Exactly,” Belle said. “We helped them to rise, we can help them to fall.”

Emma raised her glass. “I’m in. Let’s take them down. United we stand, divided we fall.” Belle and Mary Margaret toasted their glasses to Emma’s. “What else do we need?”

“Just one amazing attorney?” Mary Margaret suggested.

“No, no, just us! We don’t need anything else.” Emma said. “It was a rhetorical question.”

Belle laughed, but a thought was beginning to form in her mind.

“An attorney would be a good idea though.” Mary Margaret pointed out. “You did just fire yours and you’re still in the middle of settlement negotiations. That isn’t going to go away, even if you are trying to get financial revenge on Killian at the same time.”

Emma’s face fell. “True.”

“And coming to think of it, I could use a good lawyer too,” Mary Margaret mused. “I let David go without a fight, but maybe it’s time to make him sweat a little bit. It’s only fair, really. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him, of course, but he doesn’t need to know that.”

“Now you’re talking.” Emma high-fived Mary Margaret across the table.

“Ladies,” Belle announced, “I know just the gent.”

X

“You’re all out of your minds.”

“Mr Gold, we’re not the ones turning down three perfectly legitimate and potentially lucrative divorce cases,” Emma said benignly. “I’d rethink my definition of ‘out of your mind’ if I were you.”

The three women were sitting in a well-apportioned room in the offices of Midas, Midas and Gold (it had taken Mary Margaret a good ten minutes to stop giggling like a lunatic after she had seen the name) and Mr Gold was regarding them from behind his desk with an expression that was equal parts scared and incredulous.

Belle had never been to her neighbour’s workplace before – she’d never had any reason to. All she knew of his professional life was that he was a lawyer and he was considered one of the best. The firm had been set up by Rum Gold and Aurelius Midas, friends from law school, almost twenty years ago, and when Midas’s daughter Kathryn had completed her training, she had become the third partner. Midas, Midas and Gold had gone from strength to strength ever since, building up a reputation as ruthless, efficient, but altogether brilliant lawyers. Belle sneaked a critical glance at Rum. She was having a little trouble picturing him as a hard-nosed attorney, destroying testimonies in court and squeezing his opposition dry. She’d only ever known him as a kindly neighbour and devoted father whom she rarely saw without a small boy clinging to his hand like a hyperactive limpet.

A thought struck her.

“Well, we tried,” Emma said, getting up to leave. “Come on Belle. It was a good idea but Mr Gold evidently doesn’t share our concerns.”

Mary Margaret and Emma left, but Belle stayed behind in the office, the situation running through her head.

“Did you fight?” she asked Rum presently.

“Pardon?”

“When your wife left you. When you got divorced yourself. Did you fight for justice and a fair deal? You’re well off, you have a lucrative job, you wear beautiful suits, and yet you live in a comparatively small apartment. You’re a single parent, do you get any kind of support from Bae’s mother?”

Rum looked away, staring out of the window.

“I just wanted Bae,” he said. “I was so desperate to get custody of Bae that I forgot I was a lawyer, forgot all I knew about deal-making and compromise and getting the best possible result for my client. Because I wasn’t my client, I was just me, and I was so desperate to keep Bae. I let her have everything else that she wanted.” He snorted. “It was more than she deserved.”

Rum sighed. “All right. I’ll take your case, and your friends’. But I won’t fight a battle that I’m guaranteed to lose just for the sake of fighting it. You might want to warn Ms Swan of that. I won’t be responsible for prolonging the agony, so to speak.”

Belle nodded. “That’s fair enough. Thank you.” She extended her hand across the table and Rum shook it. “The deal is struck.”

“I must be going soft in my old age,” Rum muttered. “I’ll start work in the morning. You may also wish to warn Mrs Nolan not to be too distressed if I rip her husband to shreds in a hearing. Metaphorically, of course. I have had the distinct displeasure of working with Regina Mills’ mother, and if I know Cora, she will have passed on some of her tricks.”

Belle smiled. “I’ll warn her. Thank you again.”

“To be honest, Belle, it’ll be my pleasure to take a crack at your husband. I might even bring Mulan in to help me.”

Belle shook her head in good-natured despair. “It’s been all I can do to stop her going after him and castrating him with a pair of cuticle scissors.”

Rum laughed, and Belle left the office with a lightness in her heart. With the legal matters in the hands of a committed professional, they could plot the rest of their scheme themselves. Emma had already had a couple of ideas. She met up with her friends in the reception area and gave them two thumbs up. Mary Margaret jumped for joy.

“He’ll do it?” Emma asked.

“He’ll take us all on but within reason. He’s not going to flog a dying horse.”

“Can’t say fairer than that,” Mary Margaret said. “How did you do it? Did you flutter your eyelashes extra hard at him?”

Belle rolled her eyes. “No, I just reminded him of his own personal experience in matters such as these.”

Emma looked back down the corridor towards the office they’d just left.

“Give me a second,” she said. “I’ve got a plan but I think it might be a good idea to check that it’s legal first.”

Emma scurried back down towards their attorney’s office, and Belle and Mary Margaret waited in silence for a moment before throwing their arms around each other with a squeal of happiness. Maybe things could look up for them after all.

X

When she got home, the first thing that Belle did was to knock on Mulan’s door. She had already explained the current situation of her now practically non-existent marriage to her on Tuesday morning. It had been somewhat essential as Mulan had been leaving for work at the same time as Belle had come out of Rum’s flat still in little black dress and smeared make-up from the night before having cried herself to sleep on the sofa.

“Mulan, I have a proposition for you,” Belle began once her neighbour had opened the door.

“Does it involve castrating your husband?” Mulan asked.

“No, it doesn’t,” Belle said firmly. “It does, however, involve revenge on Gaston. Just with slightly less bodily harm involved.

A grin spread over Mulan’s face and she opened her door wide. “Come on in for a cup of tea. This proposition definitely merits hearing.”

Mulan’s apartment was very akin to Belle’s, with books from the publishing house on every available surface, but Mulan had managed to make the effect seem artistic rather than just messy, like Belle’s place was. Her coffee table had stacks of books for legs, for example. (“I’m not joking,” Mulan had told her when Belle had first seen the piece and admired it, “it took me about three months to get enough books to add up to exactly the same height for all four legs. I had things sliding off it for weeks.”) Once they were settled and drinking their tea, Mulan leaned in close.

“So, tell me about your plan.”

“I need you to be my eyes and ears in the publishing house,” Belle said. “I’m not talking full corporate espionage. Just if you happen to hear any juicy details that might not otherwise be made public, don’t feel you have to keep them to yourself. Especially if they involve the financial situation of a certain Mr G Chevalier, partner.”

Mulan patted Belle’s arm. “Belle, if it helps you take down your lowlife husband, I would happily take on full corporate espionage for you. It would be the least I could do.” She paused, contemplating. “Maybe I will start bringing Gaston his coffee after all. It makes sense to get as much access to his office as I can. Don’t you worry Belle. If he so much as sneezes, you’ll know about it.”

“I don’t need _that_ level of detail,” Belle said quickly. “I get the feeling that you’re more enthusiastic about this than I am.”

“Oh, I’ve been looking for excuses to needle him for months,” Mulan said airily. “That it’s in the name of a good cause just puts the icing on the cake. So, where’s your base of operations?” she asked.

Belle thought about it. They didn’t really have one. They’d just got slightly tipsy in Granny’s a couple of evenings ago and decided to start this mammoth task. Mulan sighed.

“You’re going to need a base of operations where you can pool your resources,” she said.

“Erm, Granny’s?” Belle said feebly. Mulan gave her a Look, then shrugged her shoulders.

“I suppose it works. At least you’ll always be well-fed and watered if you’re there. Coming to think of it, I’m fairly certain that you could survive the zombie apocalypse if you were holed up in Granny’s. Plenty of food, plenty of tables for building barricades out of, and I’m pretty sure Granny keeps a shotgun under the bar.”

“It’s a crossbow, actually.” Belle said. “But close enough.”

“So, do you have codenames and things? Do you have an operation name? All the best military operations had names.”

“Operation ‘Let’s make our husbands sorry they crossed us’ perhaps,” Belle said drily.

“You’ve got no imagination when it comes to these things.” Mulan tutted. “Anyway, my codename is ‘dragon warrior’. That way if I call you from work, we can have coded conversations.”

“Have you been spending a lot of time with Emma’s son by any chance?” Belle asked. “From what I’ve seen of him, that sounds like the kind of thing he’d suggest.”

“Great minds think alike.” Mulan shrugged. “I did get the idea off a boy in the diner the other day,” she admitted. She took something out of her pocket and handed it to Belle. It was her engagement ring. “I believe you lost this.”

“Mulan…”

“Oh, I’m not suggesting you wear it again,” Mulan said. “But that’s twenty-four carat gold and one humungous sapphire there. You might want to consider selling it.”

Belle curled her fingers over the ring. “You’re a bad influence on me.”

“You love me really, Belle. Have no fear, I’ll keep an eye on Gaston for you.” She paused “But it’s not just Gaston that you need to get back at, you know.”

“I know, we’re working on Emma and Mary Margaret’s husbands as well.”

“No, no, I don’t mean that. I never thought I’d say this, but I think you’re due a visit to the therapist’s office. Maybe talk to the other one this time. I’m sure Dr Hopper would have something to say about his partner’s indiscretions.”

Belle felt herself returning Mulan’s wide smile.

“I like the way you think, Mulan.”


	7. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a tearful separation, Kathryn Midas, and an impromptu eviction.

Since both Mary Margaret and Belle worked full-time in schools, their plans could not effectively be put into fruition until the autumn break, but when that week arrived, they flew into action. It was Emma who had the most ideas for how to get back at her husband, and she had spent the few weeks honing her ideas into something workable. So it was with a light heart and positive spring in her step that Emma found herself standing in the docks next to Killian’s beloved yacht, the _Jolly Roger_ , flanked by a couple of bailiffs. (Their names were Dove and Tiny, according to Mr Gold who had recommended them to her. She had no idea what they were actually called.) She had called Killian to tell him to meet her there, and she was biding her time, waiting for him to arrive. She couldn’t wait to see his face when he realised what was happening.

“Emma, what on earth is going on?”

Killian was half-in and half-out of his car, eyeing the two larger men with an understandable degree of unease.

“I’m doing what you suggested, Killian,” Emma called to him, and she gave him the sweetest smile she could muster. “I’m selling the shared assets.”

“Woah! Stop right there!” The words propelled Killian out of the car and onto the jetty. “The Jolly is not a shared asset. The Jolly is mine. She’s all mine. I bought her. I own her.”

“Ah yes, Killian, but the thing is, the money you bought her with, well, that wasn’t entirely all yours now, was it?”

Killian blinked at her, casting a worried glance at the two bouncers.

“What do you mean, Emma?”

“The Jolly was bought with the profits from the Manhattan office’s first year of operation,” Emma said. “The money was transferred out of the Manhattan account and into your personal one. It was your gift to yourself for such an excellent first year of trading in New York.” She waved a plastic wallet full of paperwork at him. “I have all the documents right here, Killian, there’s no use in trying to deny it.”

“Ok, so I used the company’s funds to buy the boat,” Killian said. “So what? We still made enough to give all the employees a bonus and make new investments. A few thousand for a boat barely skims the surface. No-one’s going to have a problem with that.”

“Oh, no-one does have a problem with it, Killian.” Emma said. “The fact remains, however, that at the time you bought the boat using the company profits, I still co-owned the company with you. Ergo, half of those profits should be mine to spend on things. Not necessarily boats. And since you spent all of it on a boat, I reckon that half this boat belongs to me, and as such I would like to sell it. We can split the proceeds and everyone will be happy.”

“Emma, you’re being ridiculous,” Killian scoffed.

“Am I really?” Emma’s tone hardened. “Of course, we could always just split the boat itself in half. Tiny!”

Without any further prompting, Tiny left the jetty and went over to the black SUV that the two bailiffs had arrived in, taking a large chainsaw out of the back and revving it.

Killian’s eyes widened and his face paled.

“You wouldn’t,” he began, his voice strained.

Emma remained unmoved. “Try me.”

Tiny continued to move towards them with the chainsaw, and Killian panicked, throwing himself across the front of the yacht.

“No!” he cried from his position sprawled on the deck. “Don’t hurt her!”

Tiny stopped, but the chainsaw engine kept running. Emma folded her arms.

“So, are you agreeing to my proposal, Killian?” she asked.

“Yes,” Killian muttered. “Yes, you can sell the Jolly. Just don’t hurt her.”

Emma nodded to Tiny, who stopped the chainsaw and took it back to the car. As expected, Killian had just needed a little bit of persuasion.

“I knew you would see reason in the end, Killian,” she said, and paused for a while. Killian had not moved from the deck. “Unless you would like us to sell you along with the boat, I suggest you get off it. Of course, we could always include you as part of a package deal, who knows what you might be worth?”

With obvious reluctance, Killian got up off the deck and stepped back onto the jetty, holding out the boat’s keys to Emma. Before leaving them, he gave the side of the yacht a loving stroke, and Emma could have sworn she heard him whisper ‘don’t worry darling, I will see you again’.

“You know,” Dove said once Killian had driven away, the first words he had spoken since he had arrived at the docks, “Killian could just buy his half of the boat from you and be done with it.”

“Of course he could,” Emma replied, twirling the keys in her fingers. “But I think I’ll wait for him to figure that out by himself.”

X

If Mary Margaret had to describe Mr Gold in one word, it would be ‘terrifying’. If she had two words, she would choose ‘absolutely terrifying’. Sitting opposite the man in his office, watching him bark orders and threats down the phone to David’s lawyers, she found it extremely hard to reconcile this image with one of a man in plaid pyjama bottoms carrying a small boy and a large dinosaur.

“Right,” he said benignly after dropping the receiver back into its cradle and giving it a muttered curse. “I think that sorts that out. Our first hearing is at ten sharp on Wednesday, just as you requested.”

Mary Margaret nodded mutely.

“Erm, thank you,” she finally managed to squeak.

“My pleasure,” Gold said. “Unless there’s anything else you would like to ask or bring up, I think that’s about all we can do for today.”

“No, no, I’m good,” Mary Margaret said hastily. “I’ll, erm, I’ll see you on Wednesday then.”

They said their goodbyes and shook hands, and Mary Margaret just managed to stop herself from breaking into a run to leave the office. It was not that Mr Gold scared her, per se, more the fact that she was feeling incredibly sorry for whoever was on the other end of that phone call, and she was not looking forward to the hearing at all. She was very glad that Gold was on her side. True, Belle had warned her that Gold would not go easy on David, and true, she was looking to get the best possible deal for herself, but all things considered, she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to cope. She had a terrible vision of throwing herself under her chair and refusing to come out until it was all over. She wished she had Emma’s confidence or Belle’s courage to see her through, but she knew that this was something that she was just going to have to be strong and face alone. She had already been walked over once, she would not let it happen again because she was scared of the confrontation.

Mary Margaret took a deep breath and held her head high as she began to walk out of the office.

“Excuse me, is it Mary Margaret Nolan?”

Mary Margaret turned to see a blonde woman peering out of the room next to Gold’s.

“Yes,” she replied warily.

“Excellent, I’m glad I caught you. I’m Kathryn Midas. Rum mentioned that he was handling your divorce and I thought I might be able to help.”

“Thank you, but I think Mr Gold has it all under control,” Mary Margaret said. Kathryn grinned at her.

“Oh no, I’ve no doubt of that. I heard him through the wall. I was thinking of offering slightly more… off-the-books assistance.”

Mary Margaret raised her eyebrows. “How do you mean?”

Kathryn gestured for her to come into the office, and once the door was closed, she addressed Mary Margaret again.

“There’s no reason for you to have heard of me, but I have crossed paths with your husband before,” Kathryn began. “I was once engaged to his brother.”

“You were engaged to James?” Mary Margaret could not quite believe it. David’s twin brother was a notorious womaniser and she’d never known him stay with the same woman longer than about two months.

“It was quite a while ago. He left me for a climbing enthusiast named Jacqueline, but that’s beside the point.”

“If it’s any consolation, he left her, too,” Mary Margaret mused. “On top of Mount Snowdon, as it happens. I don’t know to this day if she got down.”

At this, Kathryn burst into giggles and it took her a few moments before she calmed down.

“Well, the poor girl’s probably better off without him, mountain or no mountain. The point is, it was whilst I was engaged to James that he and David began their first business ventures. James was always the more ambitious one and he ended up going it alone, but for a while they were in it together.”

Mary Margaret nodded. “Yes, I know all this. I don’t see how it’s relevant to my divorce.”

“It’s not relevant to your divorce really.” Kathryn said. “I just couldn’t believe that David, who was always the sensible one of the two, had followed in his brother’s footsteps and done something so utterly stupid as to leave you for a witch like Regina Mills. So I was thinking that if you wanted some kind of leverage that Mr Gold might not perhaps consider, I might be able to help. Because in those first years, James and David pulled some pretty audacious scams.”

“What do you mean?” Mary Margaret asked, although her heart was pounding, because she thought she knew where she was heading and she wasn’t sure if she liked it.

“There’s a great advantage to being an identical twin,” Kathryn said, her voice conspiratorial. “They used to pretend to be each other. James managed to fleece quite a bit with that little deception. David helped. I knew they were doing it; I never said anything at the time because it seemed pretty harmless and I was in the middle of my training. It was only once I finished the course I realised it was illegal and by then it was all in the past and everything was above board. But if you wanted to use the information to your advantage now… Well… It still happened, even if it was ten years ago.”

Mary Margaret blinked, taking in the information.

“Really?”

Kathryn nodded.

“It’ll be there in his tax records,” she said.

Whilst Mary Margaret did not know what she expected her reaction to the news to be, she knew that she had not expected it to be laughing. But sitting in Kathryn Midas’s office, that was what she was doing. Oh, Regina was going to drop him like a hot potato if she found out. And David, well, David would never handle jail.

It was the perfect way to make him sweat.

She, Emma and Belle were going to have a lot of fun with this.

“Thank you, Kathryn,” she said once she had finally regained the power of speech after the rather unceremonious revelation that her husband’s brother was a crook and her husband had aided and abetted him.

“You’re welcome.” Kathryn smiled. “The Nolan brothers have done enough screwing around. It would be good for them to get a taste of their own medicine.”

The first thing that Mary Margaret did on leaving the office was take out her phone and call Emma.

“Hello?” Emma’s voice sounded distracted, and there was the distinct sound of movement and panicked voices in the background.

"Emma, it’s Mary Margaret. Where are you? Can you talk?"

"Yeah, not for long though. I’m in the middle of an impromptu eviction."

"Don’t worry, we’re the ones doing the evicting," Belle’s voice said.

"An impromptu eviction?" Mary Margaret asked, suddenly worried.

"Yes. Come on over to the Manhattan office of Jones Transatlantic and see for yourself. It’s been great fun. Anyway, what’s your news?"

"Well," Mary Margaret began. "I’m at Gold’s office, and I was just talking to Kathryn Midas, who gave me the most brilliant story about David…"

X

Belle looked around the empty office of Jones Transatlantic with a sense of satisfaction. Within a single afternoon, they had managed to completely clear the space, which took up the top floor of a not-insubstantial building in the centre of Manhattan. It had been remarkably easy, actually. Emma had simply walked in and demanded that everyone leave. When no-one had taken her up on the offer, Tiny and Dove, the tame bailiffs, had started carrying the furniture out, to the extent of wheeling Killian’s secretary out of the office and into the elevator still in her chair. The other staff had got the message pretty quickly after that: Emma meant business.

The Manhattan office of Jones Transatlantic was owned by one Emma Swan-Jones, as Killian had deemed it easier for tax purposes to have her name on the deeds.  Killian had been using the space rent-free with no official tenancy agreement.  In legal terms, he was squatting, and Emma had every right to evict him.

"You can’t do this!" Killian had stormed, grabbing his model of the Jolly off his desk as Tiny and Dove had carried it past him and clutching it closed to his chest.

"Actually, Killian, I can," Emma had replied, the picture of calm. "You should have thought of this when you put my name on the deeds."

"But! But!" Killian had been absolutely apoplectic with rage, and Belle had begun to fear for his blood pressure. It wasn’t through any kind of concern for his wellbeing, more a worry that giving her husband a heart attack wouldn’t look good when it came to Emma’s settlement hearings.

"Ok, ok, so you own the office space, but you don’t own my furniture!" Killian had exclaimed whilst wrestling an expensive table lamp from Tiny.

"I’m not taking your furniture, Killian," had been Emma’s placid response. "It’s simply a case of your furniture being in my office. And I don’t want it in my office anymore, so I’m having it removed."

"Oh come on, Emma, what could you possibly need this office for? I have a business to run here!"

But Emma was showing her bounty hunter side, the staunch, immovable, unshakeable bail bondsman who never failed to find her quarry. She was not going to back down, and Killian had given in. Now, Emma was standing at the window, looking down with a satisfied smile.  Belle came over to join her.  Below, Killian was sitting forlornly at his desk in the car park, the rest of the office furniture stacked up around him, waiting for the removal van to come and take it away to storage whilst he figured out what to do with it.

"So… what are you going to do with the office now that you’ve got it?" Belle asked.

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Sell it perhaps.” She waved to Killian in the car park and he flipped her off. Belle laughed and pulled Emma away from the window. The two women fell into silence and Belle took to looking around the space. It was a good-sized office, looking even bigger in the absence of the furniture and the ridiculously large potted plants.

“You know, you could keep it for a little while,” she suggested.

“What would I use it for?” Emma asked. “I work from home. Alone. I mean, an office would be nice, but I don’t really need all this space.”

“Well, maybe not an office just for you,” Belle said. “I was talking to Mulan the other day and she still thinks that we ought to get ourselves a base of operations that’s slightly better and less public than Granny’s. Maybe we could use here.”

Emma leaned back against the window, thinking for a while before responding.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” She sighed and grinned at Belle. “This is why we need you to be the brains of the outlet.”

“Hello?” Mary Margaret’s voice echoed out in the stairwell.

“In here, Mary. Welcome to our new base of operations.”

The dark-haired teacher poked her head around the door and then inserted herself fully.

“If I ask ‘why is Killian sitting at his desk in the carpark doing a passable impression of a kicked puppy?’ am I likely to get a logical response?” she asked.

“I evicted him,” Emma said, her tone matter of fact, as if evicting one’s husband from his office was a quotidian affair. “Come and tell us all about Kathryn Midas’s gossip,” she added, looking around before realising that there was nowhere to sit. “Damn. I should have made some sort of deal to keep some of the furniture.”

They settled on the floor whilst Mary Margaret told her tale, and Belle risked another glance out of the window. A misty rain had begun, and it was coating all Killian’s furniture in a sheen of damp. The man himself was still sitting at his desk, looking utterly bereft and trying to arrange all his files around him under his umbrella. He looked like a hen nursing her chicks, and the image made Belle giggle afresh.

“So what’s our next move?” Emma asked. “Apart from getting some chairs for this place?”

“Well, we’ll need to get our hands on some proof of David’s indiscretions,” Mary Margaret said. “Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but when he moved out, he took all his financial paperwork with him.”

The three women fell into a contemplative silence for a while.

“Maybe it’s time to go under the radar a bit,” Emma suggested. She had a gleam in her eyes that Belle was not altogether sure she liked the look of. “I mean, if they’ve been doing dodgy deals, maybe we ought to follow their lead. You said that Jefferson lives in the same building as David and Regina, right?”

“Yes… Where are you going with this, Emma?”

“Do you think he’d be willing to aid us on a mission of a delicate nature?”

Mary Margaret gave Emma a look.

“Emma, I am not breaking and entering in the name of matrimonial revenge,” she said plainly.

“Don’t think of it as breaking and entering,” Emma said. “That’s such a crass term. I prefer to call it information retrieval.”

“Which is bounty hunter speak for burglary.”

“Mary, sometimes the best of us have to give in to our dark sides once in a while,” Emma said. “It’s all for a good cause, remember.”

Mary Margaret was visibly torn.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said eventually. “Let’s do it. But can we try not to get caught. I have no doubt that Mr Gold is a brilliant if incredibly scary lawyer but I think even he might draw the line at bailing us out on top of handling all our divorces.”

“Perfect,” Emma said. “And of course we won’t get caught. I’m a professional.”

“If we were doing anything else, that thought might inspire some confidence, Emma, but right now I’m not feeling it.”

Emma ignored her friend. “You just get in touch with Jefferson and see what you can do.”

“Emma, we don’t even know if he’ll agree to help us.”

“He’s your best friend, of course he’ll agree. In the meantime, I’ll see about some chairs. Shall we go back to Granny’s until we’ve got somewhere to sit here?”

The three women left the building in a jovial mood. Killian was still sitting in the carpark as they walked past him.

“Emma…” he began, “can we please talk about this? This is getting ridiculous!”

Emma ignored him. As they made their way towards their cars, a large red Ferrari swung into the carpark at speed, almost knocking Belle over.

“Hey!” she yelled, but the driver gave no indication of having even seen her.

“Don’t bother,” Emma snorted. “She won’t care.”

“Who is she?” Mary Margaret asked, watching as the car parked haphazardly and a woman got out of the driver’s seat, running over to Killian and fussing over him.

“Milah,” Emma spat.

Milah looked over her shoulder at the three women in the corner of the carpark and her eyes narrowed at Emma. The blonde remained perfectly impassive until the other woman’s back was turned once more then stuck her tongue out. Mary Margaret couldn’t stifle her snort of laughter.

Belle didn’t join in their laughter as she got into Emma’s car. Milah had looked familiar, and she just couldn’t place where she had seen her before.


	8. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is unexpected babysitting, a rather bewildered policeman, and news from the Dragon Warrior

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for 'Operation Operation' must go to my brother.

Belle’s lazy Thursday morning re-reading _The Importance of Being Earnest_ for the umpteenth time was interrupted by a rather urgent-sounding knock on the door. Puzzled, she went to open it, and she was rather surprised to find Rum standing outside. Even more surprising than his presence was his state of disorder; hair greasy and mussed as if he’d been raking his hands through it, tie loose around his neck and obvious grey stubble over his chin.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, alarmed.

“Yes… No… Yes… Belle, are you available for the next couple of hours? Please?”

Belle nodded.

“Could you do me a huge favour and watch Bae for me? It’s his mum, she’s driving me round the bend and I’d rather not take him with me when I go for a slanging match, but it’s so short notice…”

“Of course,” Belle said. “You go and sort out whatever it is that you need to sort out.”

“Thank you so much.”

The immensurate gratitude in his dark brown eyes was overwhelming. A few minutes later found Belle in Rum’s apartment watching as he said goodbye to his son.

“Now, you be good for Belle and I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Rum was saying. Bae’s face was hurt and slightly betrayed.

“But it’s Thursday! It’s dinosaur day! You promised you’d be here all day and we could have turkey dinosaurs for lunch!”

“I know, sweetheart, I’m sorry, I really am, but I’ve got to go. I’ll be back for lunch, I promise.”

Bae folded his arms.

“You promised you’d be here all day,” he said accusingly.

Rum pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning heavily on his cane where he was crouched down to be eye-level with Bae.

“I’m sorry, Bae.”

“Are you going to see Mummy?”

Rum nodded, and Bae’s entire attitude changed. He threw his arms around his father.

“You always get sad when you go and see Mummy. Don’t be sad. We’ll have dinosaurs later.”

“Oh Bae.” Rum kissed the top of his boy’s head and ruffled his hair. “I love you.”

Bae let his father go and waited until he’d left the apartment before running back to his room. Belle followed, sedately and cautiously. He hadn’t shut the door and she could see that he was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, but she stayed outside, half out of sight.

“Are you all right, Bae?” she asked eventually.

“Mummy doesn’t like me.”

It wasn’t the response Belle was expecting and it knocked her for six slightly.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“She never wants to see me. Or play dinosaurs. Even when she still lived with us, she never wanted to play dinosaurs. She said that grown-ups didn’t play with dinosaurs.”

“Well, that’s her loss,” Belle said. “I think dinosaurs are amazing.”

Bae turned slightly to look at her and Belle came into view fully in the doorway. The little boy smiled.

“Which one’s your favourite?”

“Triceratops.”

“The horny one?”

Belle had to supress a laugh. “Yes.”

“That’s silly! T-Rex is the best! It can eat a trisery- triselly… horny one in one gulp!”

The conversation continued in the same vein for a very long time, with pauses only for Belle to get a cup of tea and Bae to get out his entire plastic and stuffed dinosaur collection in order to illustrate his point. Belle was aiding in a dramatic re-enactment of a T-Rex attack on a triceratops family (who, for some reason, had a helicopter as backup, but Belle wasn’t going to question it) when a soft Scottish voice from the doorway announced that it was all in vain because the velociraptors were coming in speedboats and would win every time.

“Daddy!” Bae’s grin was huge and infectious. “And it’s not even lunch time yet. Daddy, Belle likes dinosaurs too, can she stay for lunch? She likes the horny ones best like you do so you’ll have to share.”

Rum looked up at Belle but before any formal invitation could be made, her phone buzzed with the arrival of a text from Emma.

_Operation Gemini is on. Meet us at Jeff’s apartment as soon as you can._

“I’m sorry, I have to go now,” she said. “Next time though. I want to see who’d win in a fight between a T-Rex and a helicopter.”

Bae rolled his eyes. “The T-Rex, _obviously_.”

Belle said her goodbyes and left father and son alone together. Rum caught her eye as she slipped out of the room.

 _Thank you so much_ , he mouthed, and Belle knew that he wasn’t talking about simply babysitting for an hour and a half.

The journey to Jefferson’s apartment block was a contemplative one for Belle; despite the risky and rather illegal enterprise that she was about to undertake, she couldn’t help but think of Rum and Bae and the life they shared, and she found herself wondering about Bae’s mother. 

Her thoughts were cut off abruptly by the sight of Mary Margaret and a man she presumed to be Jefferson hanging out of a fifth storey window, waving to her frantically. 

"Come on Belle!" Mary Margaret called down to her. "We don’t have all day!"

Belle shook her head in despair and rushed to catch the keys that were thrown down to her. 

"Come straight on up and meet us on the fourteenth floor!" Jefferson said. "Operation Gemini is on!"

Belle couldn’t decide if she was amused or worried that they had started giving all the stages of their grand master plan individual operation names. At the rate they were going, she was pretty sure that one of them would end up being called Operation Operation. When she stepped out of the lift on the fourteenth floor, Emma, Mary Margaret and Jefferson were waiting for her. 

"David and Regina went out about two hours ago," Jefferson explained. "Grace and I have been keeping tabs on their comings and goings ever since you asked for assistance."

Belle, who had noticed the three pairs of binoculars around Jefferson’s neck, decided that it was probably best not to respond. She had been surprised when he had agreed to help them so enthusiastically, but then, from the tales of her friend that Mary Margaret had told them, nothing much would surprise Belle about Jefferson. 

"Right, I’m going back to keep watch. They should be gone for a while. I’ll keep you posted."

Jefferson left them in the corridor outside David and Regina’s apartment and rushed down the stairs back towards his own. 

Belle stared after him.

"He’s a bit eccentric," Mary Margaret said apologetically. "But he’s a lovely guy."

No more time was wasted musing over Jefferson’s oddities, and Emma quickly worked the lock to the apartment, opening the door without a sound and ushering them all in before locking it again behind them.

"If I was a pet store owner who had some very dodgy tax records from pulling scams with my twin brother, where would I hide them?" Mary Margaret mused. 

"Office?" Emma suggested, indicating round the corner. "Computer, nice safely locked filing cabinet? That’s where I’d look first."

Before they could move, there was an ear-splitting screech and Mary Margaret dropped the small walkie talkie she was holding.

"Bloody hell, Jefferson!" she exclaimed after picking it up and checking it was undamaged. 

 _"Sorry,"_ Jefferson’s voice crackled over the walkie talkie. _"I just wanted to see if it was working. Technology isn’t my strong suit."_

“Well, it works fine, thanks.”

_“All right, I’ll leave you in peace.”_

Mary Margaret shook her head in despair and followed Emma into the study, Belle bringing up the rear. Immediately Emma homed in on the laptop on the desk and settled herself in the chair behind it, taking out the tools of her trade and setting to work.

Belle and Mary Margaret began going through filing cabinets. The vast majority of the paperwork belonged to Regina, and David’s files, when thy found them, were not the best ordered of records. Finally Mary Margaret came across some papers shoved at the back of the cabinet that looked rather promising, and they began to take them out and put them into Mary Margaret’s voluminous handbag.

The walkie talkie crackled into life again.

_"Mary, they’re back."_

"What?" Mary Margaret yelped. "We aren’t finished! We need more time, Jeff!"

_"I’ll see if I can waylay them."_

"Come on, come on!" Emma was pleading with her USB stick. "Download faster!"

Belle and Mary Margaret continued to stuff the paper files into the latter’s handbag as Emma’s program finally loaded and she began to type into the computer with blinding speed, her fingers flying over the keyboard. 

Outside, beyond the study, Belle could hear voices approaching and she crouched down beside the door to hear better. Jefferson’s voice was unnecessarily loud, no doubt to warn them of his - and the apartment owners’ - approach, and she could tell that he was doing everything in his power to try and stop them from actually entering their home. 

"Eureka!" Emma said eventually, and she removed the USB stick. "Let’s get out of here."

Belle opened the study door a fraction just as a key turned in the front door, and she yelped and closed it again.

"Too late," she mouthed to the other women. Mary Margaret flapped her hands in a panic.

"What are we going to do, what are we going to do?"

Emma clapped a hand over her friend’s mouth. “Shh!”

There was a pause in the conversation outside the room, then Regina’s voice.

"David, I swear I heard something in your study."

The three women froze.

"Now what?" Mary Margaret hissed. "We can’t exactly go out the same way we came in!"

Emma looked around the small office that they were trapped in but it was fairly obvious that there was no way out other than the door they had entered by and the large window that led out onto a fourteen storey drop.

"Well whatever we do, we’ll have to do it quickly!" Belle said under her breath. From her position by the door she could hear footsteps getting closer and closer. "He’s coming!"

"Come on Emma, you do this for a living!" Mary Margaret whispered.

Emma’s advice was simple. 

"Hide."

Mary Margaret rolled her eyes but dutifully hid behind the filing cabinet. Emma dived under the desk and Belle was left to scramble across the room to the floor length curtains, which she managed to vanish into just as the door opened.

Luck was on their side. David gave the room a cursory onceover, declared to Regina that there was no-one in there and it must have been the wind or her imagination, and left again, locking the door behind him. 

Belle let out a sigh of relief and stepped out from behind the curtain. 

"That was too close," Mary Margaret muttered. "And we’re still no closer to actually getting out."

"All right, all right, give me a minute." Emma paced around the room with an air close to that of a caged tiger. She came over to the window, glanced out of it then did a double take. Belle saw the small smile spreading over her friend’s face. 

"Got it."

In the next room, the TV had been switched on, providing just enough background noise for Emma to open the window without fear of being overheard. 

Mary Margaret blanched. 

"Emma, I am not jumping out of a building in the name of matrimonial revenge," she said weakly. 

"I’m not asking you to jump out of a building. Come over here."

Belle came out from behind the curtains and looked out of the window. Hanging just below them was a window cleaning platform. She looked from the ricketty thing to Emma and back again. 

"You’re not seriously suggesting…" she began. 

"Have you got a better idea?" Emma asked, one leg already halfway out of the window. "Come on, get in." She swung her other leg out, settled herself on the sill and hopped down onto the platform. It wobbled rather precariously. 

"Come on!" Emma said. "We haven’t got much time!"

Belle took a deep breath and followed Emma’s lead, her friend catching her as she jumped onto the platform. They both looked up at Mary Margaret expectantly. Their dark-haired partner in crime shook her head, her eyes wide as saucers.

"Come on!" Emma said, her voice desperate. "Mary we don’t have time!"

"We’ll catch you," Belle assured her. 

Mary Margaret began to climb out of the window.

"And don’t scream," Emma added. Mary Margaret raised her eyes to heaven and stuffed the end of her scarf in her mouth before jumping onto the platform. Emma and Belle caught her and the structure gave another rather worrying wobble. Mary Margaret gave a little scream through her nose but dutifully kept her jaws clamped around her scarf tassels. Emma reached up and pulled the window down, before grabbing the controls for the platform and pressing random unmarked buttons in an attempt to get them to the ground. Finally one had the desired effect and they sped towards earth at an alarming rate. As they rushed past Jefferson’s window, Mary Margaret gave a frantic wave and Jefferson startled, dropping his walkie talkie spilling his cup of tea down the front of his shirt, all over his binoculars. Whilst Belle had not yet reached the stage of having her life flash before her eyes, she was certainly wondering whether they were going to make it out of this unscathed. They were about four feet from the ground when Emma finally hit the correct button and they stopped with a jolt. Belle took a moment to catch her breath before climbing out of the platform and jumping the final few feet to the ground. 

"Well," Emma said, once they were all safely back on the pavement brushing themselves down. "That could have gone better, but it could have gone a lot worse." 

Mary Margaret just gave Emma a filthy look and spat out the end of her scarf.

"Can I help you, ladies?"

The voice was disarmingly polite and slightly Irish, and Belle looked up to see a police officer looking at them with a very puzzled expression. That he was looking for an explanation for their very odd behaviour was obvious, but he was too stunned by what he had seen to actually ask. On the face of it, they had evidently been breaking and entering, but given the hysteria that had accompanied their exit from the building, it was also evident that they were not professional criminals by any manner or means. Belle couldn’t blame the poor man for not knowing at all what to make of them. 

It was Emma who saved them. Mary Margaret was still hyperventilating and Belle had drawn a complete mental blank when it came to an acceptable excuse for the scene that he had just witnessed. _Hello Officer, we were just stealing some dodgy tax returns as blackmail material for one of our philandering asses of an almost-ex-husband._ As entertaining as the adventure had been, and even though they were doing it in the name of truth, justice and sweet, sweet revenge, Belle somehow doubted that the police would see it in quite the same light that they did.

"Well, Officer…" Emma peered closely at the man, trying to find a name somewhere on his person.

"Officer Humbert, ma’am." If Belle didn’t know better she’d say he was trying to hold back an amused smile. 

"Well, Officer Humbert, we are from the Window Cleaning Platform Quality Assurance Union and we were just assuring the quality of this window cleaning platform."

Officer Humbert raised an eyebrow, and if Belle had not been trying her hardest not to be arrested, she would have done exactly the same. 

"And does it meet your stringent high standards?" he asked. 

"It does, so if there’s nothing further, we will be on our way to make our report."

"Right." Officer Humbert did not look at all convinced, and Emma deflated slightly. 

"All right, all right. I’m a bail bond person and I was given the wrong address so I needed to make a hasty exit."

The officer seemed to be a lot happier with that explanation, but that still didn’t stop him regarding Belle and Mary Margaret with suspicion. “And your colleagues?”

"They’re new," Emma said airily. "On the job training. First day out in the field, they’re a bit nervous."

"Right…" Officer Humbert was still looking rather unconvinced. "Could I have your name please?"

"Certainly. Emma Swan-Jones."

Suddenly it was if a switch flipped in the policeman’s mind and he broke into a wide smile. 

"Emma Swan! You were the one who chased down August Booth when he tried to get to Thailand after he ran off with the proceeds from the cancer charities gala!"

Emma seemed to grow about three inches in height with pride. “Indeed I was. Every penny returned within a week.”

"It’s an honour to meet you," Officer Humbert said. 

"It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Officer."

"Call me Graham." There was a pause, and Belle was beginning to think that maybe she and Mary Margaret would be able to slip away unnoticed, but then he spoke again. "About this incident…"

Belle’s heart sank to her boots. 

"Yes, I do admit that I have no idea how to pilot one of these things," Emma said. "Still, it was an emergency."

Graham nodded. “Well, since no-one was hurt and no damage was caused, I think we can put this one down to experience. Maybe in the future you might benefit from a slightly better exit strategy, Ms Swan. Or some lessons in piloting a window cleaning platform.”

Emma nodded. 

"Thank you, Officer Humbert. Graham. Your discretion is most appreciated."

"Any time." The policeman waved them on their way and turned back towards his car. Belle, Emma and Mary Margaret made it to the corner of the block in a composed manner and then broke into a skittering run once they were out of sight of the cruiser. 

"I thought we were done for!" Mary Margaret gasped once they had deemed themselves sufficiently far away from the building. "Well done Emma."

Belle grinned. “I think you might have an admirer there, Emma.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “Oh, be quiet.” 

Just then they heard running footsteps behind them and Belle turned, fearful that Graham had changed his mind about arresting them. Luckily, the newcomer was Jefferson. 

"Are you all right?" he asked, panting for breath. "I was going to stick my head out of the window and ask but then there was that policeman and I had to wait until he’d gone before I could follow."

"We’re fine, Jefferson, thank you," Mary Margaret said. "We got everything we came for."

"Glad to hear it. Right." The four co-conspirators looked at each other for a moment. "Do you want to come back for a cup of tea?" Jefferson asked eventually. "I’d say you’ve earned it after that."

"Me too," Mary Margaret said. "But maybe not back at yours. You know, returning to the scene of the crime and all that."

"Granny’s?" Belle suggested.

The others agreed enthusiastically. 

X

The phone was ringing inside the flat when Belle arrived back home, still exhilarated from the day’s exploits, and in her haste to open the door and answer it she ended up dropping her keys, so the answerphone had already cut in. 

 

“Dragon Warrior calling Bookworm Beauty! Belle, pick up the phone, I have exciting news! You’re never going to believe this, I…”

Belle snatched up the receiver. “Hello Mulan.”

“Belle! You know you asked me to be your eyes and ears in the publisher’s? Well, your ears have picked up some rather interesting gossip.”

“Which is?”

“Cara and Leo are selling up.”

Belle almost dropped the phone. Cara Mallory and Leo White were the two partners who shared ownership of the publishing house with Gaston. They were selling up? Both of them?

“What?” she yelped, not quite able to believe her ears.

“Cara and Leo are selling up. I may have happened to be walking past Cara’s office when they looked to be having an interesting conversation, and I may have happened to drop all the files I was holding, and I may have happened to take a long time to pick them up again and caught every word.”

Belle blinked.

“Cara and Leo are selling up,” she repeated.

“Yes. And as far as I can tell they’d be willing to sell both their parts to the same person to give them a majority share over Gaston. Cara did always like you. She was sad to see you leave the company, and I don’t think she was particularly impressed when it was let slip that you were getting divorced because Gaston had been shagging your therapist. So,” Mulan added brightly. “Do you fancy getting back into the publishing industry?”

Belle slid down the wall, landing on the carpet with a soft thump. It was tempting. It was very tempting. She did miss the publishing house terribly, and it was gratifying to know that Cara, the woman who had been her terrifying boss, was on her side. Or at least, not on Gaston’s.

“You’re thinking about it. I can tell.” Mulan’s voice betrayed the fact that she was very obviously grinning. “Go on Belle, take a leap of faith. I’d much rather work for you than for Gaston.”

“Mulan…” Belle sighed. “How on earth am I going to afford to buy two thirds of a company?”

“Well, have you sold your engagement ring yet?”

Belle looked up at the hall dresser where her ring still sat.

“I hardly think an engagement ring will buy me a publishing house.”

“You never know,” Mulan said airily. “It depends how desperate Cara and Leo are to sell.”

“I doubt that they’re that desperate.”

“Well…” There was silence on the other end of the phone until Belle heard coffee being sipped; Mulan must have been in the kitchen at the office. “Have you got any little gold mines? Property? Cars? See how much you get in your divorce settlement and sell it all?”

Belle, whose ears had pricked up at the word ‘property’ sat bolt upright from her position slumped against the hall wall.

“Mulan, I’ve had an idea.”

“Praise be! What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to sell a man a boat and a penthouse office.”

“Right.” Mulan paused. “I didn’t know you owned a boat and a penthouse office.”

“I don’t.” Belle grinned to herself as she began to work out the finer details of the plan in her mind. “But I know someone who does.”


	9. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a tender reunion, a blanket fort, and a revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because there’s been a little confusion: Cara Mallory is the Storybrooke-ified name I give to Maleficent – from Carabosse, the name of the dark fairy in the Sleeping Beauty ballet. She’s not Cora. :)

Two weeks after the momentous revelation that her former bosses were selling up, Belle could be found standing calmly next to the Jolly Roger at its mooring stage. On hearing of her plans to take over the majority share in the publishing house, Emma had been more than willing to sell Belle Killian’s boat and his office space in order for her to carry through with her plan. Cara Mallory had been equally delighted to hear from Mulan that Belle was attempting to exact revenge on her philandering spouse and had offered her share of the company for a fraction of its normal worth. As a result, Belle was now in possession of a penthouse office and a luxury yacht, both of which she had obtained for a very reasonable price.

Cara was the second person to arrive at the dock after Belle, and she rushed over to throw her arms around her erstwhile intern.

“Oh Belle, it’s been too long. When I heard about everything that had happened between you and Gaston… honestly, running off with the therapist? How terribly crass, it’s worse than some of the trash romances we print.”

“It’s good to see you too, Cara,” Belle said. Cara released her from the bear hug just before it became awkward. “I was surprised to hear that you and Leo are selling though. You put so much work into that firm, it was your baby.”

Cara nodded. “It was, but I think it’s the right time to move on now. It’s had the best twenty years of my life, and now that Aurora’s moved on there’s nothing keeping me in New York any more. I think it’s time to take a step back and retire absolutely disgracefully.” Cara’s grin was wicked, and Belle took a step back to study the older woman critically.

“Are you in love, Cara?” she asked. It was not something that she would ever have dreamed of asking her superior when they had worked together. Cara had been downright fearsome when Belle had been employed by her, but now she could see the woman that Aurora – Cara’s goddaughter – had always seen. Belle had lost count of the times she had expressed her fear of Cara to Rory, only for her fellow intern to say ‘she’s not that bad once you get to know her’.

“Possibly,” Cara said. “I’ve found myself the most wonderful toyboy. Speaking of, is that the scoundrel we’re waiting for?”

Belle followed Cara’s gaze to where a black car had pulled up and Killian was getting out of it.

“Yes. That’s Killian.”

“I say,” Cara purred. “I can quite see what your friend saw in him. It almost makes me sad to think of what comes next.”

Belle had to suppress a smile as Killian came over.

“Good morning Mr Jones,” she said brightly. “My name is Belle Chevalier. We spoke on the phone.”

“Yes,” Killian said flatly. “I remember you from when you helped Emma evict me.”

Belle chose to ignore that comment and continued.

“As you know, I have come into possession of your boat, and I was wondering if you would like it back. For a price, of course.”

Killian ran a hand lovingly over the Jolly’s bow, and he sighed. Belle could see how much it was rankling him to have to buy back the boat, but she had no sympathy for him for that point in time. She was getting far too much entertainment from the whole situation.

“How much do you want for it?” he asked eventually.

“Well, that depends entirely on how much you are willing to pay for it,” Belle continued. “This is Ms Mallory. She is also interested in purchasing the boat from me. How much would you be willing to pay, Ms Mallory?”

“It is a very beautiful boat,” Cara said, casting an appraising eye over the Jolly, and she named her price. Killian spluttered.

“That’s more than I paid in the first place!” he exploded. Belle merely shrugged.

“It seems that the boat is yours, Ms Mallory.”

“Very well then.”

There was a long pause for a moment. Belle bit her lip surreptitiously. This was the part of the plan where everything could come unstuck – if Killian decided that the Jolly was not worth the expense that they were driving him to, then their efforts would all be for nothing. All they had to go on was Emma’s reports that he really, _really_ loved his boat and would do anything to get it back.

“Fine.” He named a price a little higher than Cara’s, and she immediately upped it. Belle took a step back, watching them thrash it out in an auction of two with no auctioneer. She was on the verge of getting Cara to stop in case they really did push it out of Killian’s price range. The older woman seemed to be getting quite a thrill out of exasperating the younger man.

Eventually she gave in, and Killian agreed a price that was very far in excess of his original bid. As soon as it was established that the boat was to be his again, he ran up the steps and jumped aboard, stroking the deck and panelling with a worrying tenderness.

“Are you all right, darling?” she thought she heard him say. “The bad lady didn’t hurt you, did she?”

Cara raised an eyebrow.

“Right…” She embraced Belle. “I hope to see you in the office very soon, Belle,” she said. “I wish you all the best with the rest of your endeavours.”

Belle smiled. “Thank you, Cara. And good luck with the toyboy.”

“Oh, he’s perfectly delicious and quite devoted to me. I think I’m going to enjoy this one.” She called to Killian before she left the docks. “It was very nice to meet you, Mr Jones. Have fun in your little boat.”

Killian was not paying her any attention, and it took Belle several attempts to get through to him.

“Mr Jones. Mr Jones!”

He turned to her.

“I have also come into possession of the place that was formerly your company’s Manhattan office. I’m sure that we could come to some sort of profitable arrangement regarding the space?”

X

With the office now back in Killian’s possession, he wasted no time in putting all his furniture back into it and the three women were forced to move their base of operations back to Granny’s. Mary Margaret and Emma were already sitting in their usual booth when Belle arrived back from finalising all the paperwork, and they appeared to be having a rather heated discussion. Belle raised an eyebrow at Granny as she entered, and the older woman simply gave her a shrug in return.

"I just don’t think it’s fair," Emma was saying as Belle came over to her friends and slid into the booth beside Mary Margaret. "Killian’s right back to where he started, it’s like he hasn’t been punished at all. He’s got his office back and he’s got his damn boat back."

"He’s severely out of pocket," Belle pointed out. "Cara got slightly carried away in the bidding war."

"Yes, but he’s still in the same position as he was before, we haven’t caused him any lasting damage." Emma sounded rather exasperated. "It’s not like you and Gaston, I mean, when you take over the publishing house, he’s going to have to live with that for a long time. And you’ve got enough blackmail material on David to make him sweat for ages," she added to Mary Margaret. "I just feel like we gave Killian a minor inconvenience for a couple of weeks and now his life’s gone back to normal and we’re both back in the same position as we were before."

"Well, I don’t see what we can do about it, Emma," Mary Margaret countered. "Killian doesn’t have any illegal enterprises we can exploit and you don’t own any of his company anymore."

"I don’t even get to see any of the money!" Emma continued. "You’ve got it all!"

She jabbed her finger in Belle’s direction.

Belle, who had been listening to the exchange with an ever-sinking heart, sighed.

"Oh for God’s sake, Emma, you can have the money," she said. "But can’t you see? That’s not what it’s about. Sure, it’s great to put the bastards out of pocket but what did we say when we first said we’d do this? Marina. We were doing this for Marina, to get justice for her. In all the haste to hurt our husbands, we’ve lost sight of that. So have the money if you really want it, Emma, because this thing we’ve started, it’s turning poisonous, and we’ll end up no better than the men if we carry on like this!"

She left the booth before she could say anything else that she might regret, and began to make her way home, questioning everything that she had done in the name of matrimonial revenge. She gave a heartfelt sigh as she knocked on Mulan’s front door. It had been a good idea at the time, but it had been borne of anger, grief and guilt, and no idea based on those things, however good it might seem at the time, was ever going to work.

As soon as her friend opened the door, Belle knew that Mulan knew that something had gone wrong.

"Oh dear…"

Belle shrugged.

"It was never going to work out. Let’s face it, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but when you’ve got three women scorned working together, that fury tends to get turned on each other. Oh Mulan, what were we thinking?"

"Belle, you were hurt and betrayed and you had every right to be. But you can’t give up now. Look how far you’ve come. Look at what you’ve managed to achieve together."

"I know, but were we achieving it for the right reasons? I just feel like everything we’ve done has been so petty, and we took such great pleasure in it, but what has it really done in the end? Has it really made us feel better?"

Mulan raised an eyebrow. “Belle, you can’t start getting cold feet now. I hate to say it but these plans are already in motion. So, you may have lost your path a little. But that doesn’t mean you’ve strayed from it completely. There is still so much good you can do. This is just a little stepping stone on your way.”

"We said we’d do this for Marina." Belle sighed. "Sure, we can get revenge on our own husbands in her name, but how’s that actually helping Marina’s memory?"

"Oh Belle… I’m sure you will think of something, you always do. You have such a great mind and once this all goes through, you can do so much good."

Belle gave a wan smile, the words were a comfort, but she simply didn’t know where to begin. Mulan’s attire caught her eye and she furrowed her brow. “Were you on your way out?” she asked. Her neighbour looked a little apologetic.

"I’ve got a date," she said.

Belle smiled. As much as she wanted company in her misery, she couldn’t really ask Mulan to give up her plans because she was feeling down. It was really fate making her turn around and go back to make amends with Emma and Mary Margaret.

"Who’s the lucky girl?" she asked.

Mulan smiled. “Someone special. I’ve only been seeing her for a week or so but I’ve got a good feeling, you know? When you see someone and you just immediately feel better.”

Belle nodded. She knew that feeling. She didn’t want to admit that she knew that feeling, but she did.

"I know." Mulan grabbed her handbag and shut her front door behind her before boldly going over and knocking on Rum’s door.

When he answered, and smiled at the two ladies outside, Belle immediately felt better, and she definitely did not want to admit that she immediately felt better. He was her lawyer, her next-door neighbour; he had a son… And he had looked after her so well that evening she found out about Gaston, and every time he saw her, he smiled, and Bae was the most adorable little boy she’d ever met…

"Mr Gold, please take care of Belle," Mulan said without any preliminary pleasantries. "She’s rather melancholy and in need of a cup of tea."

"I’m fine," Belle protested, but Bae, who had appeared to investigate who was at the door, already taken her hand in his little one and was pulling her towards the living room.

"Belle, come and see my blanket fort!" he said excitedly.

"Bae!" his father exclaimed. "Leave Belle alone please, no pulling!"

"It’s fine," Belle said, waving over her shoulder to Mulan. Perhaps a little while spent in Bae’s effervescent company would be what she needed to take her mind off her current plight.

Shaking his head in despair, Rum gave his well wishes to Mulan and closed the door. Bae’s blanket fort was set up behind the sofa and was so full of dinosaurs that Belle wondered how the boy himself fitted in there as well.

"Daddy made it," he said excitedly.

"Aye, and it’ll all have to come down tonight or Daddy will have no pillows on his bed," Rum called through from the kitchen. "Why we couldn’t use your pillows is beyond me."

"Your pillows look more like rocks!" Bae protested. "It’s a proper dinosaur cave now! My pillows have Spiderman on. Spiderman wasn’t around when there were dinosaurs."

"Can you imagine the carnage that would have been caused if he was?" Rum muttered, bringing a cup of tea through to Belle and settling himself on the sofa with his laptop.

There was silence for a moment as Belle drank her tea and Bae pondered.

"I wonder who would win in a fight between Spiderman and a T-Rex?" he wondered wistfully. Belle smiled. Oh, to be so young and have so few questions about life once more.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Rum offered quietly. His dark eyes were earnest, he genuinely wanted to know.

"It’s nothing." Belle sighed.

"It can’t be nothing if it’s made you so unhappy," Rum said. "But I’ll leave it alone."

"Don’t be sad, Belle," Bae said. "Here, you can have Steggy. He’ll make you feel better."

"Oh Bae…" Belle accepted the huge plushie onto her lap. "You are so sweet. So are you," she added to Rum.

He smiled, and for a moment, he looked like he was going to come over to her, but he didn’t.

Belle took another sip of her tea and stroked Steggy’s furry plates, wishing she knew what to say, wishing that she didn’t feel so conflicted.

Silence continued to reign supreme until Belle became aware of someone calling her name outside.

"Belle? Belle!"

It was Emma’s voice.

"Belle?"

And Mary Margaret.

Rum raised an eyebrow at Belle. “Would you like me to let them know that you’re in here, or do you wish to hide?”

Belle got off the sofa. “I’ll go. I think it’ll be better to make amends sooner rather than later.”

She went through to the front door and opened it, peering out of the frame. Emma and Mary Margaret were standing outside her flat, pressing her doorbell insistently.

"Ladies?"

Her friends turned and Mary Margaret looked rather puzzled, looking from Belle to her front door and back again.

"I thought you lived at number fifteen?" she asked.

"I do."

"So…"

"Long story," Belle said.

"You can invite them in," Rum called from the living room. "Bae and I don’t bite. Much."

"I don’t bite!" Bae’s voice said indignantly.

"You bit the dentist."

"She’s a dentist, she doesn’t count," Bae huffed.

Belle took a step back and waved her friends inside, ushering them through to the living room.

"Oh. Hello Mr Gold." Mary Margaret seemed a little taken aback at finding Rum there, even though Belle was sure she’d told her friend that she lived next door to him.

Rum waved. “Tea, ladies? Or is something stronger going to be required?”

"We drove," Emma and Mary Margaret said. "But thanks for the offer."

"Oh no, the brandy’s for me," Rum muttered. "I’ve never had this many women in my apartment before, I’m feeling incredibly outnumbered."

"We’ve made up," Emma said to Belle, coming over and giving her friend a hug. "You’re right. We got so caught up in our plans for revenge that we forgot why we were doing it in the first place. So we’ve had an idea, and we think it will work. First things first though - you have got to get that publishing house."

"But the money…" Belle began.

"Oh, forget the money," Emma said airily. "We’ve had a better idea. There’s nothing we’ve got on Killian himself, so we thought that maybe we could get to him through other sources."

Belle raised one eyebrow. “Other sources such as?”

“Other sources such as Milah.”

There was the sound of smashing glass and Belle turned to see Rum standing in the kitchen doorway, broken glass and puddled alcohol at his feet and a rather stunned expression on his face. His hand was still outstretched as if he was holding the bottle.

“Rum?” Belle sprang off the sofa and began to make her way over to him, stopping when she saw plainly that he was looking straight through her. “Rum, are you all right?”

“Milah?” he repeated.

Emma nodded slowly.

“Milah Weaver?”

“Yes…” Emma’s brow creased. “Do you know her?”

“Know her?” Rum gave a cynical snort. “I used to be married to her. She’s Bae’s mother.”

Bae popped up from behind the sofa on hearing his name mentioned and shuffled towards his father. Belle grabbed him before he could step on any glass and Rum was jerked out of his trance, going into the kitchen to get a towel and broom to clean up. After sending Bae on his way back to his blanket fort, Belle moved over to the mantel, to the photoframe that stood there. The picture was primarily of Bae and Rum, but there was a woman half in shot, the picture cropped awkwardly and, if Belle knew Rum, in anger. There was no denying that the half-a-face belonged to Milah. No wonder the other woman had seemed familiar when she had almost run over Belle in the carpark at Killian’s office. Belle turned back to her two friends to see both Emma and Mary Margaret grinning like cats who had got the proverbial cream. Emma laughed and clapped her hands together.

“Oh Milah, I bet you didn’t tell him that rather important fact, did you? Killian… If you didn’t get on with Henry at ten, you’ll have a field day with Bae at five. Oh yes, I think I know exactly how to get to Killian.” She turned to Rum, who had since cleaned up the broken glass and was regarding Emma and her gleeful cackling with an expression that showed quite clearly that he was on the verge of joining Bae behind the sofa.

“Mr Gold,” Emma began. “I am going to need to borrow you and your son.”


	10. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a not-so-tender reunion, a person who is not an FBI agent, and the return of the stuffed stegosaurus.

Gaston Chevalier was having a remarkably good day. At least, he had been having a remarkably good day, until he had walked into the publishing house that he partially owned and was immediately met with Mulan, who was smiling like the cat that had got the proverbial cream. Since smiling was not something that Mulan did often to Gaston, especially in the wake of his break-up with Belle, he was everso slightly unnerved by this.

"Good morning Gaston," she said brightly. "How are you today?"

"Fine, thank you… Mulan, what’s going on?"

"Whatever do you mean, Gaston?" she asked innocently. "I’m merely wishing you a good morning on this most pleasant of days. Cara and Leo are waiting for you in the conference room."

His partners waiting for him in the conference room would not be a cause for concern for Gaston on any normal day. He normally got on very well with both of them - Leo slightly more than Cara, because Cara had always held a soft spot for Belle and had taken his wife’s side when their marriage had come to an end. However, the unbridled glee in Mulan’s voice made him rather nervous. Scratch that. Incredibly nervous.

With an ever-growing sense of dread, Gaston made his way towards the conference room.

When he walked in, he very nearly turned tail and walked straight back out again.

Belle was sitting on the other side of the conference table between Cara and Leo.

Gaston had not seen Belle since that fateful night at the hotel when she had found out about his relationship with Fae. She had refused to see him for any kind of reconciliation attempt, she’d changed the locks on the apartment, and she was handling everything through her lawyer. Gaston, who hadn’t known that their mild-mannered neighbour with the dinosaur-obsessed five-year-old was a lawyer, let alone a horribly soul-sucking one, had had quite a shock when he’d walked into their first settlement meeting to be met with a stony and immovable Scotsman whom he used to live next door to. 

"Belle," he began, completely unsure of what to say to his almost-ex-wife now that she was smiling benignly at him from across the conference table, her hands steepled together over a pile of papers. "You’re looking… well…"

She was looking well. Very well. Better than she had looked during the last few months of their marriage. She seemed to have grown in confidence and composure in the weeks that they had spent apart.

"Thank you Gaston. You’re looking well as well. Since you’re here, shall we get started?"

Belle indicated the seat opposite her and Gaston sank into it, still unable to form coherent sentences.

"What are you doing here?" he finally managed to blurt out.

"I’m here for the same reason that you are, Gaston," Belle said calmly. "Partners’ meeting."

"You’re not a partner," Gaston said, his voice weak as his brain tried desperately to catch up. He looked at Cara and Leo. "She’s not a partner."

"Oh, did Cara and Leo forget to tell you?" Belle tutted. "I own their shares of the company now. So, I am a partner. A two-third partner."

Gaston blinked. Belle co-owned the publishing house. And she owned more of it than he did.

"We did tell you that we were selling," Leo said mildly. "You’ve mentioned it yourself that you thought it was time for us to step aside and let some younger blood take over."

Gaston cringed, he’d thought he’d been alone in his office when he had made that particular remark. Evidently, the door had been open and Mulan had overheard. He was going to do something about her. But then, Belle had more power than he did, and Belle and Mulan got on very well indeed.

"I don’t think there’s really anything else that we need to hang around for," Cara added. "And I must dash, the boyfriend and I are off to see Rory. Before I go, dear…" Cara stood, then rifled through her handbag and passed something to Belle. "I thought that might be of interest to you."

"And I’ve got my first game of golf as a retiree," Leo mused. "Well, I’m very sure we can leave everything in your more than capable hands, Belle," he said. "Don’t forget the meeting with the board of trustees tomorrow."

"Of course not. Thank you Leo, Cara, you’ve been so helpful."

"Any time, my dear."

Leo and Cara left the conference room, and Gaston began to feel very trapped and very scared. Belle was engrossed in reading the paper that Cara had passed to her. She seemed to be completely absorbed in it, and Gaston wondered if he could sneak out without her noticing.

Presently she looked up just as he was about to get out of his chair and he was forced back down under the intensity of her raised eyebrow.

"Well, Gaston, I believe we have a lot to discuss."

Gaston shook his head.

"You can’t do this."

Belle looked around the conference room. “No, I think I can. The first thing I want to discuss is the meeting with the board of trustees tomorrow. Now, Cara and Leo have already advised them of my taking over the majority share in the company, and they have given their approval. What they don’t know about, however, is this.”

She tossed the paper across the table to him, and Gaston looked at the clipping.

THERAPIST UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR FRAUD AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, read the headline, above a picture of Fae.

Famed New York sex therapist and marriage counsellor Dr Fae Blue is under investigation after it was discovered that she had been continuing a sexual relationship with the husband of one of her clients. Dr Blue continued to accept money from a female client on the pretence of helping to resolve her marital issues even after she had entered a relationship with the woman’s husband. The board to which Dr Blue answers received a tip-off…

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked. "We’re not named, you can’t pin anything on me."

Belle just raised an eyebrow. True, neither he nor Belle were mentioned by name, but enough people knew that he was seeing Fae and that she had originally been their therapist that it would not take long for everyone to put two and two together.

Gaston began to feel sweat bead along his hairline.

"You can’t do this," he said again.

"I haven’t done anything." Belle spread her hands in an open gesture of defiance. "I knew as little about this as you did until Cara handed me the paper this morning."

"It says they received a tip-off."

"Wasn’t from me."

Annoyingly, Belle was very obviously telling the truth; she had never been any good at lying convincingly. Gaston began to suspect Fae’s practice partner, Dr Hopper.

"I don’t think that the board of trustees would take very kindly to discovering your connections to someone so ethically dubious," Belle said. "Especially given our links with the charities that Leo and Cara so painstakingly built up over the years."

It rankled to hear Belle call the company ‘our’.

"What do you want from me?" Gaston asked, horribly aware of how squeaky his voice was sounding.

"Well… I will keep all this quiet from the board of trustees - I want the company’s name dragged through the mud even less than you do - and you can stay on in your minority owner position, but there is one condition."

"What’s that?"

Belle smiled genially.

"I’m going to write a number, and organisation, on a piece of paper, and I’d really quite like you to write that number and that organisation on a cheque."

X

David Nolan was not having a good day at all. He had been having a fairly average day until a rather large and extremely scary man with an FBI badge had walked into the pet store and, in full view of several customers and Regina, promptly handcuffed him and bundled him into the back of an unmarked black van, having apprehended him on suspicion of fraud and various other illegal enterprises.

Rattling along in the back of the van, David could taste the fear at the back of his tongue, because the charges levelled against him were all completely true. But everything had happened ten years ago, and it wasn’t really that much money, and did it really warrant the investigation of the FBI? Oh no, maybe James had done something absolutely irretrievably awful and now David was implicated by association. Maybe they thought he was James? Maybe James had given them David’s name when he was arrested, and then had skipped bail, and now they had re-arrested the wrong brother?

"It’s my brother’s fault!" he yelled to the man in the front of the van, but he had no idea if he could hear him or not. "Whatever it was, I had nothing to do with it!"

He did not receive a response, not that he had really expected one. He began to ponder his options. Could he try to escape from the van? It might be a bit difficult with his hands cuffed behind his back. Could he maybe escape from the handcuffs? He’d heard of people breaking their wrists to get out of handcuffs before. But if he had a broken wrist it would not really help him in getting out of the van.

Not normally claustrophobic, and not normally given to losing his head in strange situations, David did something most unlike him, and began to panic.

By the time he felt the van come to a stop, he was convinced that he was about to die.

The doors opened and he blinked against the light. And then blinked again at the sight that met him.

"Thank you for getting him here in one piece, Dove."

Mary Margaret was standing there. Was she part of the FBI now?

"Will you need me for anything else, ladies?"

"No thank you, that will be all."

The other voice belonged to Kathryn Midas, whom David had not seen since James had broken off his engagement to her.

"Righto." The FBI agent, whom David began to doubt was actually an FBI agent, gave the handcuff keys to Mary Margaret and got back into the van, driving off and leaving David trapped in an alleyway with his almost-ex-wife and his brother’s ex-fiancée.

"I’m still intrigued as to where he got the FBI badge," Mary Margaret mused.

"Mr Dove is a man of many talents, Mrs Nolan," Kathryn said. "We’ll say no more about it."

Although now not quite as convinced that he was about to die, and even less convinced that he was really under arrest, David was nonetheless still incredibly confused.

"Mary? What’s going on?"

"We’re going to have a little talk, David. And you’re going to listen to what I have to say, or I really will tip off the FBI."

It was at that moment that David saw the folders in Mary Margaret’s hands, the folders that contained all the evidence of his slightly less than legal enterprises that he had undertaken with James.

He had kept them should he ever need to blackmail his brother and to be honest, he had forgotten all about them. He had never expected them to be used as blackmail against him.

"That’s blackmail!" he blurted out.

"Yes it is," Mary Margaret replied.

David turned to Kathryn. “You’re a lawyer! You can’t condone things like this.”

Kathryn simply raised an eyebrow and David knew that he was done for. He turned back to Mary Margaret. He wondered where she had found the audacity to go through with a plan like this. If there was one thing to be said of Mary Margaret when they had been together, it was that she was the exact opposite of audacious. She would barely have said boo to a goose and would go out of her way to avoid confrontation. Whilst he would never go so far as to call her a doormat, she was a placid soul, calm and kind. He had never seen this side of her before, and it saddened him somewhat to realise that this newfound fire had only come to her after her had left her, that she had grown so much stronger without him, rather than by his side.

Regina had always been fiery and exciting and perhaps that was the reason why he had been so drawn to her. Mary Margaret had been comfortable, content with the status quo always being the same. Regina had been dangerous, and he had wanted some of that danger, wanted a change of pace. Maybe if he had just tried, he could have found that same excitement and change of pace with Mary Margaret.

They did always say that you never knew what you had until you lost it.

"Now, David," Mary Margaret began. "As you might now, an old friend of mine died recently. And I was thinking about her, and comparing her position to my own, and they were really quite similar. She’d been left by her husband for someone far more exciting. And there were a group of us, in fact, who decided that there are far too many of us in the same position, and far too many others who may suffer in the same way that Marina did. So, we have clubbed together and decided to help others in our position, so that no-one suffers in the same way as Marina did. And we thought, who better to help us in our goal than the people who put us in this position in the first place?"

David felt his palms begin to sweat. “What do you want from me, Mary?”

Mary Margaret smiled.

"I’m going to write an organisation and a number on a piece of paper," she said. "I’d quite like you to write that organisation and that number on a cheque."

X

Emma Swan was having an absolutely excellent day. She had arrived at the newly-refurnished Manhattan office of Jones Transatlantic just as Killian was returning from a very long Friday lunch meeting, and she had made it very clear that she was not going to go away until they had had a little chat.

“But first things first.” Emma handed over a five dollar bill to Killian, who raised an eyebrow.

“And this is for?”

“Selling our joint assets,” Emma replied. “I sold the joint assets and we’re splitting the proceeds. This is your half.”

“Five dollars.”

“Yes.”

“You sold my boat and my office, which I then bought back, for ten dollars?!”

“Well, you see, when you suggested that we sell the assets, you never specified a price that they ought to be sold at,” Emma said. “Oh, all right then, you can have it all.” She handed him another five dollar bill, which Killian just stared at.

“I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “Emma, I really…”

He tailed off as he opened his office door, staring into the room and blinking slightly. Emma peered round the door and smiled at the sight that met her.

“Ashley!” Killian called warily to his secretary over his shoulder. “Why is there a rather large stuffed stegosaurus sitting on my desk?”

“What do you mean?” Ashley came up behind them and peered into the office. “Aww, how sweet! Isn’t he just precious?” She rushed inside and picked up the soft toy then stopped short. “Oh. Hello. I guess he’s yours.”

It was at that point that Bae popped up from under Killian’s desk, and Ashley handed the dinosaur back to him. Killian emitted a worryingly high-pitched squeak.

“Ashley, why is there a small child under my desk?”

“Well, I didn’t put him there,” Ashley said levelly. “Come on,” she added to Bae. “I’ve got cookies in my desk drawer.”

Bae followed Ashley out of Killian’s office, dragging Steggy along with him.

“Bae! There you are.”

Gold entered the room and came over to them.

“Can I help you?” Killian asked, utterly perplexed.

“Well, we were actually looking for Milah,” Gold said. “She’s got Bae this weekend and she was meant to pick him up this afternoon but she never arrived, so we thought that we’d come and find her.”

Emma watched with amusement as the colour left Killian’s face, his eyes darting between Bae, Gold, and the doorway which no doubt led to the direction that Milah was in.

“Ashley,” he began faintly, but he stopped on seeing her happily occupied with Bae. “Erm… Can someone go and get Milah?”

Someone dutifully left, and a few moments later Milah came into the room, stopping short on seeing Gold and Bae there. Emma was fairly certain that it was only Killian’s presence, beckoning her over, that stopped the other woman from turning tail and taking flight there and then.

She visibly steeled herself and stalked over to the gathered group at Killian’s office doorway.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed, jabbing an accusatory finger in Gold’s direction. Gold merely raised an eyebrow, leaning back slightly from Milah’s palpable vehemence.

“It’s Bae’s weekend with you,” he said placidly. “You didn’t come and collect him, so we decided to come looking for you. You know, just in case something had happened.”

“You have no right to… to…” Milah began.

“Remind you that you’re a mother?” Gold suggested, his voice impeccably polite but so cold Emma could almost feel it. Milah looked around, beaten back momentarily, and then her gaze alighted on Emma. She rounded on the younger woman and Emma had to take a couple of steps back.

“You!” Milah shrieked. “This is all your fault, you witch!”

Gold made to step between the two women before his ex-wife could resort to physical blows, but Killian beat him to it, the younger man waving his arms in the vain hope of calming things down.

“Leave Emma out of this!” he exclaimed. “Can we focus on the fact that you didn’t tell me you had a husband and a child?”

“Ex-husband,” Milah hissed, glaring daggers in Gold’s direction.

“He’s not an ex-child!” Killian spluttered, frantically indicating Bae, who was now sitting on Ashley’s desk giving her an in-depth introduction to Steggy, blissfully oblivious to the situation unfolding between his parents. 

“And I think it’s time for us to leave,” Gold said. “See you later, Emma. Come on Bae, let’s go home and watch Toy Story.” As much as Emma wanted Gold to stay and bear witness to the fallout that was undoubtedly going to occur, she knew that getting Bae out of the scene was a far more important priority at this point in time.

Bae obediently trotted along after his father. “Bye Ashley!” he called, waving Steggy at her. Ashley waved back enthusiastically and gave a happy, heartfelt sigh.

“I want a stuffed stegosaurus,” Emma heard her say wistfully, and she grinned before returning her attention to Milah and Killian, who were still standing at the grab-ready in Killian’s office doorway. A small part of Emma thought that it would probably be wise to follow Gold and Bae’s example and remove herself from the situation, but the majority of her wanted to stay and watch what was going to happen next. She found herself wishing that she’d brought some popcorn.

“I didn’t think that it was the right time to tell you,” Milah was saying.

“Milah, we’ve been seeing each other for over a year! When was it going to be the right time?”

“I know you don’t like children!”

“I know that too, but I’d still appreciate knowing that you have one!”

“Oh what difference does it make, Killian?” Milah wheedled. “I hardly ever see him…”

“He’s still your child!” Killian exploded. “I might not have got on with Henry but at least I knew he existed!” He turned this way and that, as if he had no idea where he was going and finally flung his hands up in despair. By this point, the entirety of the firm was looking in their direction. Or rather, they were looking in Killian and Milah’s direction, and Emma just happened to be standing next to them.

“If I may interject, Killian,” she began.

“No you may not,” Milah snapped.

“If I may interject, Killian,” Emma repeated, ignoring Milah’s glared daggers, “I still need to talk to you about a rather important matter, and I’m on a tight schedule.”

Killian, still reeling from the revelation, waved the way into his office and sat down in his chair, looking rather shellshocked. It took Emma three attempts to get his attention.

“Killian, I am as sick of this very long, very drawn out divorce process as you are, and I have a simple way to sort it out and make it more amicable for all parties involved.”

Killian just nodded dumbly.

“I’m going to write a number and an organisation on a piece of paper,” Emma began. “I’d quite like you to write that number and that organisation on a cheque.”


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the story ends with new beginnings.

"Granny, where do you want this wine?”

"Just hang onto it for a minute."

"Granny, my arms are falling off here!"

"Oh for goodness sake, give it to me."

Belle looked down from the top of her stepladder where she was fixing decorations to the light fittings and watched the interplay between Granny and Ruby, who were setting up the catering, and Mulan, who had come along to help as Ruby’s plus one. It was a small world after all, Belle mused. It must have been a thousand to one chance that she actually knew Mulan’s new girlfriend. 

In the main hall below her, Emma and Mary Margaret were also busy setting up chairs and tables and decorations ready for their grand opening, and Belle thought back fondly over the last few months. It had been a rather ambitious project, that many people had tried to dissuade them from. But the people who mattered most had supported them in their endeavours, and they were almost ready for their grand opening.

_Marina House, free public advisory service offering counselling, impartial legal advice and domestic crisis assistance._

They were having a big party to celebrate finally opening their doors and Belle could not wait to make a start. They had recruited help from all walks of life whom they had encountered upon their journey, with Archie and Rum able to recommend people that they knew to assist them.

It seemed the most fitting way to honour their friend and use their husbands hush money for a good cause. The three of them had come together in a time of crisis but they all knew that not everyone had the same luxury of a support network. If they could provide a safe place for others in their situation, then Marina’s memory would be honoured, and they could prevent losing anyone else to the same tragedy.

“Ok, we’re ready down here,” Mary Margaret called up to Belle, who finished up her decorations and skittered down the ladder.

“Shall we, ladies?”

Together the three women threw open the doors to Marina House to let in the light and the public, and usher in the beginning of a  new era…

X

Later in the evening, Mary Margaret was standing at the door to welcome the guests, and she was surprised when she saw David coming up the steps towards her.

“Hey,” he began, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot as he met her.

“Hey.” Mary Margaret smiled. The little charade with Dove seemed to have really knocked him for six and she could not say that she disliked this new light that he now saw her in.

“Do you want to come inside?” she asked eventually, when David made no move to do or say anything. He nodded and Mary Margaret led the way into the main room of the building where the party was being held.

“It looks fantastic,” David said, looking around the room. “This is honestly amazing.”

“Thank you.” Mary Margaret smiled, proud of her achievement. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jefferson notice her and begin to come over, before raising an eyebrow and taking a step back. His expression was a smirking, unreadable one, but Mary Margaret thought that she knew what he was driving at.  She turned to David.

“Is Regina not coming?” she asked David lightly. “A big event like this, with her social position, I would have thought she’d be here.”

“Erm, no, she’s not coming,” David said. “To be honest I came alone for some peace and quiet.”

Mary Margaret hid a snigger behind her hand. “And what is making her particularly loud today?” she asked.

“I sold the pet store.”

Mary Margaret stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“I sold the pet store. I just realised that it wasn’t what I wanted. I missed the old times, back when life was a lot simpler. I’m going back to the animal shelter tomorrow.”

“What made you change your mind?” Mary Margaret asked.

“Well an hour being bundled around in the back of a truck terrified that you are going to die, does kind of put things in perspective slightly.”

Mary Margaret knew that she shouldn’t laugh, but  she couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped her.

“You know,  you didn’t have to kidnap me,” David said presently. Mary Margaret blushed. “I would have just given you the cheque if you’d asked. There was no need for the fake FBI and the blackmail.” He gave a snort of good-humoured laughter. “I was scared out of my wits at the time but afterwards I told James and we just couldn’t stop laughing. It was an adventure, I’ll give you that much.”

Mary Margaret had to laugh herself. “To be honest I’m amazed I went through with it. The only reason that  Kathryn was there was to stop me getting cold feet.”

“Badass is a good look on you,” David said. “You should do it more often.”

Mary Margaret sighed. It was times like this when she missed David the most - when he was right there beside her. But this time, there was no Regina lurking in the background ready to stake her claim, and Mary Margaret could enjoy her time with David. He had been more than her husband, and when she lost him, she had lost her best friend as well. Even if they could not work out as a couple, she would forever lament the loss of the friendship.

Perhaps there was hope for it after all.

David held out a hand. “Want to dance?”

Mary Margaret nodded. Perhaps there was even hope for them as a couple.

“I’d love to.”

X

Across the room, Emma was trying to second Henry into dancing with her.

“Mum! This is embarrassing!”

“Come on Henry, just one dance, please? I don’t have anyone else to dance with and I love this song.”

“Mum! Grace will see me!”

“Then she’ll see what a good dancer you are! Girls love a guy who can dance,” Emma said sagely.

“Mum! She’s just a friend!”

Emma quirked an eyebrow but knew better than to push the point.

“I’ll dance with you.”

Emma turned to find Graham watching her and Henry with amusement.

“Only if you’d like to, of course,” he added hastily.

Emma grinned. “I’d like that very much, thank you Graham.”

Sadly, since she had spent so much time trying to convince Henry to dance that no sooner had she and Graham made it onto the dancefloor  than the music changed to a slower tune.

“Ah.” Graham looked a little awkward. “Do you still want to?”

Emma took a second to consider it. On the one hand, she’d gone so wrong with Killian and Neal and she’d told Henry to warn her away from any men in the future…. On the other hand, it was just a dance.

She grabbed Graham’s hands and they began to dance slowly.

“Of course.”

She could see Henry grinning in the corner, and Ruby and Mulan slowly circling beside them, the former giving her a thumbs up on seeing Graham.

“So… have you had any more escapades involving window cleaning platforms recently, Emma?” Graham asked.

Emma shook her head. “Not recently, no. But never say never.”

He laughed, and Emma smiled, and perhaps, just perhaps, she might be onto a third time lucky…

X

Watching the people dancing with a fond smile, Belle felt a soft tap on her shoulder and she turned, her smile widening when she saw Rum standing behind her with a slightly sheepish expression on his face.

"You made it!" she exclaimed. It had been touch and go as to whether Rum would be able to come to the party; his babysitters kept cancelling. 

"Yeah. My Aunt Elvira stepped into the breach. She said that this was far more important than her bridge club." He brought one hand up to run through his hair; Belle had long since learned that was his tell when he was nervous or frustrated, and it was then that she noticed something. Rum wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. She wondered if she ought to say something, or if it would be better to pretend obliviousness. 

“Belle, I…” he began, but then he tailed off and took a step back. “Mr Chevalier.”

Belle whirled round to find Gaston standing behind her.

“Mr Gold. May I borrow Belle for a moment?”

No, Belle thought, but Rum merely inclined his head and  moved away. Damn. Belle didn’t want him to go, but still, it made sense to be cordial to her ex-husband since she did now own a company with him.

"Belle, I’ve been thinking…" Gaston began after the necessary cordialities had been exchanged.

"Really, Gaston? That’s incredibly inventive of you."

The barb was completely lost on her husband. 

"And I think it’s time we tried again.”

Belle could not quite comprehend what she was hearing. 

"Pardon?"

"I think it’s time we tried again. Me and you. After all, since we’re going to be working in such close proximity.”

Belle raised one eyebrow. After everything that had happened, after they were in the middle of their divorce proceedings, was he seriously suggesting that they tried for reconciliation?

"Gaston, the last time we tried again, you slept with our therapist. Speaking of, how is Dr Blue?"

"Oh, she dumped me. Ages ago, when the investigation started. She said it was all my fault, that I was more trouble than it was worth her while."

He was trying the sob story. It wasn’t going to work. Maybe when she was younger it would have appealed to her romantic nature. No longer. Oh Gaston… She could not believe how dense he was sometimes. Especially when it came to her. Perhaps this was all just deceit and deception, trying to get his influence in the publishing firm back by getting into her good graces. He was not going to succeed. 

"Well, that’s not entirely true," she said. "Her coming up for investigation wasn’t entirely your fault. It takes two to tango, after all. But she was right about one thing, Gaston. You are far more trouble than you’re worth, and I really don’t need that kind of trouble in my life right now."

Complicated was fine. Men like Rum were complicated. She could handle complicated. She could handle small boys and large stegosauruses and volatile ex-wives. Complicated would be a welcome breath of fresh air. But men like Gaston were trouble, and no-one wanted trouble. 

"Belle…"

"Goodbye, Gaston."

She left him in the middle of the crowd, and went to find Rum again. She located him by the buffet table.

"Hey."

"Hi." She pulled up her courage and looked into his soft, unassuming eyes. She hadn’t done this sort of thing since she was going out with Gaston. "Do you want to go outside and get some air?" she asked. Rum smiled. 

"That sounds like a very good idea."

They slipped through the building to the back exit, and Belle sat down on the bottom of the fire escape, indicating for Rum to join her. 

"Thank you for coming," she began, completely unsure of what to say. Most of their interactions over the previous few months had either been in Rum’s office and strictly business related, or had been in Bae’s presence. They had had precious few moments to themselves, and Belle couldn’t help thinking once more of that fateful night, when she had run home from the hotel and Rum had tended to her bleeding and battered feet. 

"I wouldn’t miss it for the world," Rum replied. "It’s amazing what you’ve done with the place, and in such a short space of time. I’m sure you’ll continue to go from strength to strength."

"Well, it’s not without your help."

There was a moment then, when Belle was sure that time had slowed down around them. If this was a film she was watching, she’d be throwing popcorn at the screen and yelling at the characters to just kiss already. 

But Rum, although an absolutely terrifying lawyer, was also a gentleman, and having been raised by the formidable Aunt Elvira, was not the sort of man who would just kiss a woman like that. 

She took his hand and gave it a friendly squeeze, hoping to convey her intentions through the pressure alone. The corner of Rum’s eyes crinkled in a smile and he brought her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckles.

"You’re very welcome,” he said. “I’m happy to help."

Because he was in the same boat as them, after all. He knew how they were feeling. Belle knew that, had known that for a while; it was the entire reason she’d taken all their divorce cases to him. This was a project he had a vested interest in for his own sake, and that of his son. 

He was still holding her hand, and he ran his thumb over the pale band of skin on her third finger where her wedding ring used to sit.

"I noticed you aren’t wearing yours either," she remarked.

"Well, it felt like the right time," Rum said. "It’s a night of new starts, after all. Belle… I was wondering… If I could make a new start with you? I know I come as a package deal - two and a stegosaurus for the price of one - but I hope that there is room for a small boy and a large stegosaurus in your life?"

Belle smiled. “I would love to make a new start with you, and there is plenty of room for a small boy and a large stegosaurus in my life.”

Rum’s smile, his genuine schoolboy grin as opposed to the shy little half-smile she had seen so many times before, took years off his face. Beside her was no longer a harassed single father, but a man with a new lease of life and lot of happiness ahead of him. 

Presently, Belle was startled by something light hitting the back of her head. She would have thought it was rain but it did not feel wet, and looking down she realised it was popcorn from the buffet table.

"Oh for God’s sake you two, just kiss already!"

Belle turned to see Mulan in the doorway, munching a handful of popcorn. 

"You’re worse than Casablanca,” she said.

"Of all the attorney firms in all the world, you had to walk into mine," Rum said drily. 

"Technically you moved to my apartment block first," Belle pointed out. 

Mulan groaned. “Don’t make me waste good popcorn on you two again!”

"I’m not doing anything with an audience," Rum said pointedly. Mulan gave a wicked grin and went back inside, closing the door firmly behind her. 

"I’m sorry…" Belle began, but Rum was laughing. "You don’t have to if you don’t want to."

"Oh, I want to," Rum said. "I want to very much."

Belle took matters into her own hands and pressed her lips to his, hooking her arms around his neck to try and pull him in closer. His mouth was soft and eager under hers, and she felt his warm hands come to rest on her waist. 

"Well," she said once they broke away. "We’ll always have Steggy."


End file.
